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THE  UNSOLVED  RIDDLE 
OF  SOCIAL  JUSTICE 


BY  STEPHEN  LEACOCK 


FRENZIED  FICTION 

FURTHER  FOOLISHNESS 

BEHIND  THE  BEYOND 

NONSENSE  NOVELS 

LITERARY  LAPSES 

SUNSHINE  SKETCHES 

ARCADIAN  ADVENTURES 

WITH  THE  IDLE  RICH 

ESSAYS  AND  LITERARY 

STUDIES 
MOONBEAMS  FROM  THE 

LARGER  LUNACY 

THE  HOHENZOLLERNS 

IN  AMERICA 


THE 

UNSOLVED  RIDDLE 

OF 

SOCIAL  JUSTICE 


BY  STEPHEN  J,EACOCK 

B.  A.,  PH.  D.,  LITT.  DM  F.  R.  S.  C. 
Professor    of    Political    Economy    at   McGill    University, 

Montreal 
AUTHOR  OF  "ESSAYS  AND  LITERARY  STUDIES,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK:  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 
LONDON  :  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 
TORONTO:  S.  B.  GUNDY:  MCMXX 


Copyright,  1920, 
BY  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE    TROUBLED     OUTLOOK    OF    THE 

PRESENT  HOUR 9 

II.    LIFE,  LIBERTY  AND  THE  PURSUIT  OF 

HAPPINESS 33 

III.  THE    FAILURES    AND    FALLACIES    OF 

NATURAL  LIBERTY 48 

IV.  WORK  AND  WAGES 66 

V.    THE  LAND  OF  DREAMS:   THE  UTOPIA 

OF  THE  SOCIALIST    .      .      .      .      .  88 
VI.    How    MR.    BELLAMY   LOOKED   BACK- 
WARD        103 

VII.    WHAT  Is  POSSIBLE  AND  WHAT  Is  NOT  124 


* 


THE  UNSOLVED  RIDDLE 
OF  SOCIAL  JUSTICE 


I. — The  Troubled  Outlook  of  the  Present 
Hour 

THESE    are    troubled   times.      As   the 
echoes  of  the  war  die  away  the  sound 
of     a     new     conflict     rises     on    our 
ears.     All  the  world  is  filled  with  in- 
dustrial  unrest.     Strike    follows   upon   strike. 
A  world  that  has  known  five  years  of  fighting 
has  lost  its  taste  for  the  honest  drudgery  of 
work.     Cincinnatus  will  not  back  to  his  plow, 
or,    at  the   best,   stands   sullenly  between  his 
plow-handles  arguing  for  a  higher  wage. 

The  wheels  of  industry  are  threatening  to 
stop.  The  laborer  will  not  work  because  the 
pay  is  too  low  and  the  hours  are  too  long. 
The  producer  cannot  employ  him  because  the 
wage  is  too  high,  and  the  hours  are  too  short. 
If  the  high  wage  is  paid  and  the  short  hours 
are  granted,  then  the  price  of  the  thing  made, 

9 


10  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

so  it  seems,  rises  higher  still.  Even  the  high 
wages  will  not  buy  it.  The  process  apparently 
moves  in  a  circle  with  no  cessation  to  it.  The 
increased  wages  seem  only  to  aggravate  the 
increasing  prices.  Wages  and  prices,  rising 
together,  call  perpetually  for  more  money,  or 
at  least  more  tokens  and  symbols,  more  paper 
credit  in  the  form  of  checks  and  deposits, 
with  a  value  that  is  no  longer  based  on  the 
rock-bottom  of  redemption  into  hard  coin,  but 
that  floats  upon  the  mere  atmosphere  of  ex- 
pectation. 

But  the  sheer  quantity  of  the  inflated  cur- 
rency and  false  money  forces  prices  higher  still. 
The  familiar  landmarks  of  wages,  salaries  and 
prices  are  being  obliterated.  The  "scrap  of 
paper"  with  which  the  war  began  stays  with 
us  as  its  legacy.  It  lies  upon  the  industrial 
landscape  like  snow,  covering  up,  as  best  it 
may,  the  bare  poverty  of  a  world  desolated  by 
war. 

Under  such  circumstances  national  finance 
seems  turned  into  a  delirium.  Billions  are 
voted  where  once  a  few  poor  millions  were 


of  Social  Justice  11 

thought  extravagant.  The  war  debts  of  the 
Allied  Nations,  not  yet  fully  computed,  will 
run  from  twenty-five  to  forty  billion  dollars 
apiece.  But  the  debts  of  the  governments  ap- 
pear on  the  other  side  of  the  ledger  as  the 
assets  of  the  citizens.  What  is  the  meaning 
of  it?  Is  it  wealth  or  is  it  poverty?  The 
world  seems  filled  with  money  and  short  of 
goods,  while  even  in  this  very  scarcity  a  new 
luxury  has  broken  out.  The  capitalist  rides 
in  his  ten  thousand  dollar  motor  car.  The 
seven-dollar-a-day  artisan  plays  merrily  on  his 
gramophone  in  the  broad  daylight  of  his  aft- 
ernoon that  is  saved,  like  all  else,  by  being 
"borrowed"  from  the  morning.  He  calls  the 
capitalist  a  "profiteer."  The  capitalist  retorts 
with  calling  him  a  "Bolshevik." 

Worse  portents  appear.  Over  the  rim  of 
the  Russian  horizon  are  seen  the  fierce  eyes  and 
the  unshorn  face  of  the  real  and  undoubted 
Bolshevik,  waving  his  red  flag.  Vast  areas  of 
what  was  a  fertile  populated  world  are  over- 
whelmed in  chaos.  Over  Russia  there  lies  a 
great  darkness,  spreading  ominously  westward 


12  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

into  Central  Europe.  The  criminal  sits  among 
his  corpses.  He  feeds  upon  the  wreck  of  a 
civilization  that  was. 

The  infection  spreads.  All  over  the  world 
the  just  claims  of  organized  labor  are  inter- 
mingled with  the  underground  conspiracy  of 
social  revolution.  The  public  mind  is  con- 
fused. Something  approaching  to  a  social 
panic  appears.  To  some  minds  the  demand 
for  law  and  order  overwhelms  all  other 
thoughts.  To  others  the  fierce  desire  for  so- 
cial justice  obliterates  all  fear  of  a  general 
catastrophe.  They  push  nearer  and  nearer  to 
the  brink  of  the  abyss.  The  warning  cry  of 
"back"  is  challenged  by  the  eager  shout  of 
"forward!"  The  older  methods  of  social 
progress  are  abandoned  as  too  slow.  The 
older  weapons  of  social  defense  are  thrown 
aside  as  too  blunt.  Parliamentary  discussion 
is  powerless.  It  limps  in  the  wake  of  the  pop- 
ular movement.  The  "state",  as  we  knew  it, 
threatens  to  dissolve  into  labor  unions,  con- 
ventions, boards  of  conciliation,  and  confer- 
ences. Society  shaken  to  its  base,  hurls  itself 


of  Social  Justice  18 

into  the  Industrial  suicide  of  the  general  strike, 
refusing  to  feed  itself,  denying  its  own  wants. 

This  is  a  time  such  as  there  never  was  be- 
fore. It  represents  a  vast  social  transforma- 
tion in  which  there  is  at  stake,  and  may  be  lost, 
all  that  has  been  gained  in  the  slow  centuries 
of  material  progress  and  in  which  there  may 
be  achieved  some  part  of  all  that  has  been 
dreamed  in  the  age-long  passion  for  social 
justice. 

For  the  time  being,  the  constituted  govern- 
ments of  the  world  survive  as  best  they  may 
and  accomplish  such  things  as  they  can,  plan- 
less, or  planning  at  best  only  for  the  day. 
Sufficient,  and  more  than  sufficient,  for  the  day 
is  the  evil  thereof. 

Never  then  was  there  a  moment  in  which 
there  was  greater  need  for  sane  and  serious 
thought.  It  is  necessary  to  consider  from  the 
ground  up  the  social  organization  in  which  we 
live  and  the  means  whereby  it  may  be  altered 
and  expanded  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  time 
to  come.  We  must  do  this  or  perish.  Jf  we 
do  not  mend  the  machine,  there  are  forces 


14  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

moving  in  the  world  that  will  break  it.  The 
blind  Samson  of  labor  will  seize  upon  the  pil- 
lars of  society  and  bring  them  down  in  a  com- 
mon destruction. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Few  persons  can  attain  to  adult  life  without 
being  profoundly  impressed  by  the  appalling 
inequalities  of  our  human  lot.  Riches  and 
poverty  jostle  one  another  upon  our  streets. 
The  tattered  outcast  dozes  on  his  bench  while 
the  chariot  of  the  wealthy  is  drawn  by.  The 
palace  is  the  neighbor  of  the  slum.  We  are, 
in  modern  life,  so  used  to  this  that  we  no 
longer  see  it. 

Inequality  begins  from  the  very  cradle. 
Some  are  born  into  an  easy  and  sheltered  af- 
fluence. Others  are  the  children  of  mean  and 
sordid  want.  For  some  the  long  toil  of  life 
begins  in  the  very  bloom  time  of  childhood 
and  ends  only  when  the  broken  and  exhausted 
body  sinks  into  a  penurious  old  age.  For 
others  life  is  but  a  foolish  leisure  with  mock 
activities  and  mimic  avocations  to  mask  its  use- 
lessness.  And  as  the  circumstances  vary  so 


of  Social  Justice  15 

too  does  the  native  endowment  of  the  body  and 
the  mind.  Some  born  in  poverty  rise  to 
wealth.  An  inborn  energy  and  capacity  bid 
defiance  to  the  ill-will  of  fate.  Others  sink. 
The  careless  hand  lets  fall  the  cradle  gift  of 
wealth. 

Thus  all  about  us  is  the  moving  and  shifting 
spectacle  of  riches  and  poverty,  side  by  side, 
inextricable. 

The  human  mind,  lost  in  a  maze  of  inequal- 
ities that  it  cannot  explain  and  evils  that  it  can- 
not, singly,  remedy,  must  adapt  itself  as  best 
it  can.  An  acquired  indifference  to  the  ills  of 
others  is  the  price  at  which  we  live.  A  certain 
dole  of  sympathy,  a  casual  mite  of  personal  re- 
lief is  the  mere  drop  that  any  one  of  us  alone 
can  cast  into  the  vast  ocean  of  human  misery. 
Beyond  that  we  must  harden  ourselves  lest  we 
too  perish.  We  feed  well  while  others  starve. 
We  make  fast  the  doors  of  our  lighted  houses 
against  the  indigent  and  the  hungry.  What 
else  can  we  do?  If  we  shelter  one  what  is 
that?  And  if  we  try  to  shelter  all,  we  are 
ourselves  shelterless. 


16  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

But  the  contrast  thus  presented  is  one  that 
has  acquired  a  new  meaning  in  the  age  in  which 
we  live.  The  poverty  of  earlier  days  was  the 
outcome  of  the  insufficiency  of  human  labor  to 
meet  the  primal  needs  of  human  kind.  It  is 
not  so  now.  We  live  in  an  age  that  is  at  best 
about  a  century  and  a  half  old — the  age  of 
machinery  and  power.  Our  common  reading 
of  history  has  obscured  this  fact.  Its  pages 
are  filled  with  the  purple  gowns  of  kings  and 
the  scarlet  trappings  of  the  warrior.  Its  rec- 
ord is  largely  that  of  battles  and  sieges,  of  the 
brave  adventure  of  discovery  and  the  vexed 
slaughter  of  the  nations.  It  has  long  since  dis- 
missed as  too  short  and  simple  for  its  pages, 
the  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor.  And 
the  record  is  right  enough.  Of  the  poor  what 
is  there  to  say?  They  were  born;  they  lived; 
they  died.  They  followed  their  leaders,  and 
their  names  are  forgotten. 

But  written  thus  our  history  has  obscured  the 
greatest  fact  that  ever  came  into  it — the  colos- 
sal change  that  separates  our  little  era  of  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  from  all  the  preceding  history 


of  Social  Justice  17 

of  mankind — separates  it  so  completely  that  a 
great  gulf  lies  between,  across  which  compar- 
ison can  scarcely  pass,  and  on  the  other  side 
of  which  a  new  world  begins. 

It  has  been  the  custom  of  our  history  to  use 
the  phrase  the  "new  world"  to  mark  the  dis- 
coveries of  Columbus  and  the  treasure-hunt  of 
a  Cortes  or  a  Pizarro.  But  what  of  that? 
The  America  that  they  annexed  to  Europe  was 
merely  a  new  domain  added  to  a  world  already 
old.  The  "new  world"  was  really  found  in 
the  wonder-years  of  the  eighteenth  and  early 
nineteenth  centuries.  Mankind  really  entered 
upon  it  when  the  sudden  progress  of  liberated 
science  bound  the  fierce  energy  of  expanding 
stream  and  drew  the  eager  lightning  from  the 
cloud. 

Here  began  indeed,  in  the  drab  surroundings 
of  the  workshop,  in  the  silent  mystery  of  the 
laboratory,  the  magic  of  the  new  age. 

But  we  do  not  commonly  realize  the  vastness 
of  the  change.  Much  of  our  life  and  much  of 
our  thought  still  belongs  to  the  old  world. 
Our  education  is  still  largely  framed  on  the  old 


18  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

pattern.  And  our  views  of  poverty  and  social 
betterment,  or  what  is  possible  and  what  is  not, 
are  still  largely  conditioned  by  it. 

In  the  old  world,  poverty  seemed,  and  pov- 
erty was,  the  natural  and  inevitable  lot  of  the 
greater  portion  of  mankind.  It  was  difficult, 
with  the  mean  appliances  of  the  time,  to  wring 
subsistence  from  the  reluctant  earth.  For  the 
simplest  necessaries  and  comforts  of  life  all, 
or  nearly  all,  must  work  hard.  Many  must 
perish  for  want  of  them.  Poverty  was  inev- 
itable and  perpetual.  The  poor  must  look  to 
the  brightness  of  a  future  world  for  the  con- 
solation that  they  were  denied  in  this.  Seen 
thus  poverty  became  rather  a  blessing  than 
a  curse,  or  at  least  a  dispensation  prescribing 
the  proper  lot  of  man.  Life  itself  was  but  a 
preparation  and  a  trial — a  threshing  floor 
where,  under  the  "tribulation"  of  want,  the 
wheat  was  beaten  from  the  straw.  Of  this 
older  view  much  still  survives,  '  nd  much  that  is 
ennobling.  Nor  is  there  any  need  to  say  good- 
by  to  it.  Even  if  poverty  were  gone,  the  flail 


of  Social  Justice  19 

could  still  beat  hard  enough  upon  the  grain  and 
chaff  of  humanity. 

But  turn  to  consider  the  magnitude  of  the 
change  that  has  come  about  with  the  era  of 
machinery  and  the  indescribable  Increase  which 
it  has  brought  to  man's  power  over  his  envi- 
ronment. There  is  no  need  to  recite  here  in 
detail  the  marvelous  record  of  mechanical  prog- 
ress that  constituted  the  "industrial  revolution" 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  utilization  of 
coal  for  the  smelting  of  iron  ore;  the  invention 
of  machinery  that  could  spin  and  weave;  the 
application  of  the  undreamed  energy  of  steam 
as  a  motive  force,  the  building  of  canals  and 
the  making  of  stone  roads — these  proved  but 
the  beginnings.  Each  stage  of  invention  called 
for  a  further  advance.  The  quickening  of  one 
part  of  the  process  necessitated  the  "speeding 
up"  of  all  the  others.  It  placed  a  premium — 
a  reward  already  in  sight — upon  the  next  ad- 
vance. Mechanical  spinning  called  forth  the 
power  loom.  The  increase  in  production  called 
for  new  means  of  transport.  The  improve- 


20  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

ment  of  transport  still  further  swelled  the  vol- 
ume of  production.  The  steamboat  of  1809 
and  the  steam  locomotive  of  1830  were  the 
direct  result  of  what  had  gone  before.  Most 
important  of  all,  the  movement  had  become  a 
conscious  one.  Invention  was  no  longer  the 
fortuitous  result  of  a  happy  chance.  Mechani- 
cal progress,  the  continual  increase  of  power 
and  the  continual  surplus  of  product  became  an 
essential  part  of  the  environment,  and  an  un- 
conscious element  in  the  thought  and  outlook 
of  the  civilized  world. 

No  wonder  that  the  first  aspect  of  the  age 
of  machinery  was  one  of  triumph.  Man  had 
vanquished  nature.  The  elemental  forces  of 
wind  and  fire,  of  rushing  water  and  driving 
storm  before  which  the  savage  had  cowered 
low  for  shelter,  these  had  become  his  servants. 
The.  forest  that  had  blocked  his  path  became 
his  field.  The  desert  blossomed  as  his  garden. 

The  aspect  of  industrial  life  altered.  The 
domestic  industry  of  the  cottage  and  the  indi- 
vidual labor  of  the  artisan  gave  place  to  the 
factory  with  its  regiment  of  workers  and  its 


of  Social  Justice  21 

steam-driven  machinery.  The  economic  isola- 
tion of  the  single  worker,  of  the  village,  even 
of  the  district  and  the  nation,  was  lost  in  the 
general  cohesion  in  which  the  whole  industrial 
world  merged  into  one. 

The  life  of  the  individual  changed  accord- 
ingly. In  the  old  world  his  little  sphere  was 
allotted  to  him  and  there  he  stayed.  His  vil- 
lage was  his  horizon.  The  son  of  the  weaver 
wove  and  the  smith  reared  his  children  to  his 
trade.  Each  did  his  duty,  or  was  adjured  to 
do  it,  in  the  "state  of  life  to  which  it  had 
pleased  God  to  call  him."  Migration  to  dis- 
tant occupations  or  to  foreign  lands  was  but  for 
the  adventurous  few.  The  ne'er-do-well  blew, 
like  seed  before  the  wind,  to  distant  places,  but 
mankind  at  large  stayed  at  home.  Here  and 
there  exceptional  industry  or  extraordinary  ca- 
pacity raised  the  artisan  to  wealth  and  turned 
the  "man"  into  the  "master."  But  for  the 
most  part  even  industry  and  endowment  were 
powerless  against  the  inertia  of  custom  and  the 
dead-weight  of  environment.  The  universal 
ignorance  of  the  working  class  broke  down  the 


22  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

aspiring  force  of  genius.  Mute  inglorious 
Miltons  were  buried  in  country  churchyards. 

In  the  new  world  all  this  changed.  The  in- 
dividual became  but  a  shifting  atom  in  the  vast 
complex,  moving  from  place  to  place,  from  oc- 
cupation to  occupation  and  from  gradation  to 
gradation  of  material  fortune. 

The  process  went  further  and  further.  The 
machine  penetrated  everywhere,  thrusting  aside 
with  its  gigantic  arm  the  feeble  efforts  of  handi- 
craft. It  laid  its  hold  upon  agriculture,  sow- 
ing and  reaping  the  grain  and  transporting  it 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Then  as  the  nine- 
teenth century  drew  towards  its  close,  even  the 
age  of  steam  power  was  made  commonplace 
by  achievements  of  the  era  of  electricity. 

All  this  is  familiar  enough.  The  record  of 
the  age  of  machinery  is  known  to  all.  But  the 
strange  mystery,  the  secret  that  lies  concealed 
within  its  organization,  is  realized  by  but  few. 
It  offers,  to  those  who  see  it  aright,  the  most 
perplexing  industrial  paradox  ever  presented  hi 
the  history  of  mankind.  With  all  our  wealth, 
we  are  still  poor.  After  a  century  and  a  half 


of  Social  Justice  23 

of  labor-saving  machinery,  we  work  about 
as  hard  as  ever.  With  a  power  over  na- 
ture multiplied  a  hundred  fold,  nature  still 
conquers  us.  And  more  than  this.  There 
are  many  senses  in  which  the  machine  age 
seems  to  leave  the  great  bulk  of  civilized  hu- 
manity, the  working  part  of  it,  worse  off  in- 
stead of  better.  The  nature  of  our  work  has 
changed.  No  man  now  makes  anything.  He 
makes  only  a  part  of  something,  feeding  and 
tending  a  machine  that  moves  with  relentless 
monotony  in  the  routine  of  which  both  the 
machine  and  its  tender  are  only  a  fractional 
part. 

For  the  great  majority  of  the  workers,  the 
interest  of  work  as  such  is  gone.  It  is  a  task 
done  consciously  for  a  wage,  one  eye  upon  the 
clock.  The  brave  independence  of  the  keeper 
of  the  little  shop  contrasts  favorably  with  the 
mock  dignity  of  a  floor  walker  in  an  "establish- 
ment." The  varied  craftsmanship  of  the  arti- 
san had  in  it  something  of  the  creative  element 
that  was  the  parent  motive  of  sustained  indus- 
try. The  dull  routine  of  the  factory  hand  in 


24  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

a  cotton  mill  has  gone.  The  life  of  a  pioneer 
settler  in  America  two  hundred  years  ago,  pe- 
nurious and  dangerous  as  it  was,  stands  out 
brightly  beside  the  dull  and  meaningless  toil  of 
his  descendant. 

The  picture  must  not  be  drawn  in  colors  too 
sinister.  In  the  dullest  work  and  in  the  mean- 
est lives  in  the  new  world  to-day  there  are  ele- 
ments that  were  lacking  in  the  work  of  the  old 
world.  The  universal  spread  of  elementary 
education,  the  universal  access  to  the  printed 
page,  and  the  universal  hope  of  better  things, 
if  not  for  oneself,  at  least  for  one's  children, 
and  even  the  universal  restlessness  that  the  in- 
dustrialism of  to-day  have  brought  are  better 
things  than  the  dull  plodding  passivity  of  the 
older  world.  Only  a  false  medievalism  can 
paint  the  past  in  colors  superior  to  the  present. 
The  haze  of  distance  that  dims  the  mountains 
with  purple,  shifts  also  the  crude  colors  of  the 
past  into  the  soft  glory  of  retrospect.  Misled 
by  these,  the  sentimentalist  may  often  sigh  for 
an  age  that  in  a  nearer  view  would  be  seen  filled 
with  cruelty  and  suffering.  But  even  when  we 


of  Social  Justice  25 

have  made  every  allowance  for  the  all  too  hu- 
man tendency  to  soften  down  the  past,  it  re- 
mains true  that  in  many  senses  the  processes 
of  industry  for  the  worker  have  lost  in  attrac- 
tiveness and  power  of  absorption  of  the  mind 
during  the  very  period  when  they  have  gained 
so  enormously  in  effectiveness  and  in  power 
of  production. 

The  essential  contrast  lies  between  the  vastly 
increased  power  of  production  and  its  appar- 
ent inability  to  satisfy  for  all  humanity  the  most 
elementary  human  wants;  between  the  immeas- 
urable saving  of  labor  effected  by  machinery 
and  the  brute  fact  of  the  continuance  of  hard- 
driven,  unceasing  toil. 

Of  the  extent  of  this  increased  power  of  pro- 
duction we  can  only  speak  in  general  terms. 
No  one,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  yet  essayed 
to  measure  it.  Nor  have  we  any  form  of  cal- 
culus or  computation  that  can  easily  be  applied. 
If  we  wish  to  compare  the  gross  total  of  pro- 
duction effected  to-day  with  that  accomplished 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  the  means,  the 
basis  of  calculation,  is  lacking.  Vast  numbers 


26  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

of  the  things  produced  now  were  not  then  in 
existence.  A  great  part  of  our  production  of 
to-day  culminates  not  in  productive  goods,  but 
in  services,  as  in  forms  of  motion,  or  in  ability 
to  talk  across  a  distance. 

It  is  true  that  statistics  that  deal  with  the 
world's  production  of  cotton,  or  of  oil,  or  of 
iron  and  steel  present  stupendous  results.  But 
even  these  do  not  go  far  enough.  For  the 
basic  raw  materials  are  worked  into  finer  and 
finer  forms  to  supply  new  "wants"  as  they  are 
called,  and  to  represent  a  vast  quantity  of  "sat- 
isfactions" not  existing  before. 

Nor  is  the  money  calculus  of  any  avail. 
Comparison  by  prices  breaks  down  entirely.  A 
bushel  of  wheat  stands  about  where  it  stood 
before  and  could  be  calculated.  But  the  com- 
putation, let  us  say,  in  price-values  of  the  Sun- 
day newspapers  produced  in  one  week  in  New 
York  or  the  annual  output  of  photographic  ap- 
paratus, would  defy  comparison.  Of  the  enor- 
mous increase  in  the  gross  total  of  human  goods 
there  is  no  doubt.  We  have  only  to  look  about 
us  to  see  it.  The  endless  miles  of  railways, 


of  Social  Justice  27 

the  vast  apparatus  of  the  factories,  the  soaring 
structures  of  the  cities  bear  easy  witness  to  it. 
Yet  it  would  be  difficult  indeed  to  compute  by 
what  factor  the  effectiveness  of  human  labor 
working  with  machinery  has  been  increased. 

But  suppose  we  say,  since  one  figure  is  as 
good  as  another,  that  it  has  been  increased  a 
hundred  times.  This  calculation  must  be  well 
within  the  facts  and  can  be  used  as  merely  a 
more  concrete  way  of  saying  that  the  power  of 
production  has  been  vastly  increased.  During 
the  period  of  this  increase,  the  numbers  of  man- 
kind in  the  industrial  countries  have  perhaps 
been  multiplied  by  three  to  one.  This  again  is 
inexact,  since  there  are  no  precise  figures  of 
population  that  cover  the  period.  But  all  that 
is  meant  is  that  the  increase  in  one  case  is,  quite 
obviously,  colossal,  and  in  the  other  case  is  evi- 
dently not  very  much. 

Here  then  is  the  paradox. 

If  the  ability  to  produce  goods  to  meet  hu- 
man wants  has  multiplied  so  that  each  man 
accomplishes  almost  thirty  or  forty  times  what 
he  did  before,  then  the  world  at  large  ought 


28  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

to  be  about  thirty  or  fifty  times  better  off.  But 
it  is  not.  Or  else,  as  the  other  possible  alter- 
native, the  working  hours  of  the  world  should 
have  been  cut  down  to  about  one  in  thirty  of 
what  they  were  before.  But  they  are  not. 
How,  then,  are  we  to  explain  this  extraordinary 
discrepancy  between  human  power  and  result- 
ing human  happiness? 

The  more  we  look  at  our  mechanism  of  pro- 
duction the  more  perplexing  it  seems.  Suppose 
an  observer  were  to  look  down  from  the  cold 
distance  of  the  moon  upon  the  seething  ant-hill 
of  human  labor  presented  on  the  surface  of  our 
globe;  and  suppose  that  such  an  observer  knew 
nothing  of  our  system  of  individual  property, 
of  money  payments  and  wages  and  contracts, 
but  viewed  our  labor  as  merely  that  of  a  mass 
of  animated  beings  trying  to  supply  their  wants. 
The  spectacle  to  his  eyes  would  be  strange  in- 
deed. Mankind  viewed  in  the  mass  would  be 
seen  to  produce  a  certain  amount  of  absolutely 
necessary  things,  such  as  food,  and  then  to 
stop.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  was  not 
food  enough  to  go  round,  and  that  large  num- 


of  Social  Justice  29 

bers  must  die  of  starvation  or  perish  slowly 
from  under-nutrition,  the  production  of  food 
would  stop  at  some  point  a  good  deal  short  of 
universal  satisfaction.  So,  too,  with  the  pro- 
duction of  clothing,  shelter  and  other  necessary 
things;  never  enough  would  seem  to  be  pro- 
duced, and  this  apparently  not  by  accident  or 
miscalculation,  but  as  if  some  peculiar  social 
law  were  at  work  adjusting  production  to  the 
point  where  there  is  just  not  enough,  and  leav- 
ing it  there.  The  countless  millions  of  workers 
would  be  seen  to  turn  their  untired  energies 
and  their  all-powerful  machinery  away  from  the 
production  of  necessary  things  to  the  making 
of  mere  comforts;  and  from  these,  again,  while 
still  stopping  short  of  a  general  satisfaction,  to 
the  making  of  luxuries  and  superfluities.  The 
wheels  would  never  stop.  The  activity  would 
never  tire.  Mankind,  mad  with  the  energy  of 
activity,  would  be  seen  to  pursue  the  fleeing 
phantom  of  insatiable  desire.  Thus  among  the 
huge  mass  of  accumulated  commodities  the  sim- 
plest wants  would  go  unsatisfied.  Half-fed 
men  would  dig  for  diamonds,  and  men  shel- 


30  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

tered  by  a  crazy  roof  erect  the  marble  walls 
of  palaces.  The  observer  might  well  remain 
perplexed  at  the  pathetic  discord  between  hu- 
man work  and  human  wants.  Something,  he 
would  feel  assured,  must  be  at  fault  either  with 
the  social  instincts  of  man  or  with  the  social 
order  under  which  he  lives. 

And  herein  lies  the  supreme  problem  that 
faces  us  in  this  opening  century.  The  period 
of  five  years  of  war  has  shown  it  to  us  in  a 
clearer  light  than  fifty  years  of  peace.  War 
is  destruction — the  annihilation  of  human  life, 
the  destruction  of  things  made  with  generations 
of  labor,  the  misdirection  of  productive  power 
from  making  what  is  useful  to  making  what 
is  useless.  In  the  great  war  just  over,  some 
seven  million  lives  were  sacrificed;  eight  million 
tons  of  shipping  were  sunk  beneath  the  sea; 
some  fifty  million  adult  males  were  drawn  from 
productive  labor  to  the  lines  of  battle;  behind 
them  uncounted  millions  labored  day  and  night 
at  making  the  weapons  of  destruction.  One 
might  well  have  thought  that  such  a  gigantic 
misdirection  of  human  energy  would  have 


of  Social  Justice  31 

brought  the  industrial  world  to  a  standstill 
within  a  year.  So  people  did  think.  So 
thought  a  great  number,  perhaps  the  greater 
number,  of  the  financiers  and  economists  and 
industrial  leaders  trained  in  the  world  in  which 
we  used  to  live.  The  expectation  was  un- 
founded. Great  as  is  the  destruction  of  war, 
not  even  five  years  of  it  have  broken  the  pro- 
ductive machine.  And  the  reason  is  now  plain 
enough.  Peace,  also — or  peace  under  the  old 
conditions  of  industry — is  infinitely  wasteful  of 
human  energy.  Not  more  than  one  adult 
worker  in  ten — so  a  leading  American  econo- 
mist has  declared — is  employed  on  necessary 
things.  The  other  nine  perform  superfluous 
services.  War  turns  them  from  making  the 
glittering  superfluities  of  peace  to  making  its 
grim  engines  of  destruction.  But  while  the 
tenth  man  still  labors,  the  machine,  though 
creaking  with  its  dislocation,  can  still  go  on. 
The  economics  of  war,  therefore,  has  thrown 
its  lurid  light  upon  the  economics  of  peace. 

These  I  propose  in  the  succeeding  chapters 
to  examine.     But  it  might  be  well  before  doing 


32  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

so  to  lay  stress  upon  the  fact  that  while  admit- 
ting all  the  shortcomings  and  the  injustices  of 
the  regime  under  which  we  have  lived,  I  am 
not  one  of  those  who  are  able  to  see  a  short 
and  single  remedy.  Many  people  when  pre- 
sented with  the  argument  above,  would  settle 
it  at  once  with  the  word  "socialism."  Here, 
they  say,  is  the  immediate  and  natural  remedy. 
I  confess  at  the  outset,  and  shall  develop  later, 
that  I  cannot  view  it  so.  Socialism  is  a  mere 
beautiful  dream,  possible  only  for  the  angels. 
The  attempt  to  establish  it  would  hurl  us  over 
the  abyss.  Our  present  lot  is  sad,  but  the  fry- 
ing pan  is  at  least  better  than  the  fire. 


II* — Life,  Liberty  and  the  Pursuit  of  Hap- 
piness 


A' 


LL  men,"  wrote  Thomas  Jefferson 
in  framing  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, "have  an  inalienable  right 
to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness."     The  words  are  more  than  a  fe- 
licitous phrase.     They  express  even  more  than 
the  creed  of  a  nation.     They  embody  in  them- 
selves the  uppermost  thought  of  the  era  that 
was  dawning  when  they  were  written.     They 
stand  for  the  same  view  of  society  which,  in 
that  very  year  of  1776,  Adam  Smith  put  be- 
fore the  world  in  his  immortal  "Wealth  of 
Nations"  as  the  "System  of  Natural  Liberty." 
In  this  system  mankind  placed  its  hopes  for 
over  half  a  century  and  under  it  the  industrial 
civilization  of  the  age  of  machinery  rose  to  the 
plenitude  of  its  power. 

33 


34  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

In  the  preceding  chapter  an  examination  has 
been  made  of  the  purely  mechanical  side  of  the 
era  of  machine  production.  It  has  been  shown 
that  the  age  of  machinery  has  been  in  a  certain 
sense  one  of  triumph,  of  the  triumphant  con- 
quest of  nature,  but  in  another  sense  one  of 
perplexing  failure.  The  new  forces  controlled 
by  mankind  have  been  powerless  as  yet  to  re- 
move want  and  destitution,  hard  work  and  so- 
cial discontent.  In  the  midst  of  accumulated 
wealth  social  justice  seems  as  far  away  as  ever. 

It  remains  now  to  discuss  the  intellectual  de- 
velopment of  the  modern  age  of  machinery  and 
the  way  in  which  it  has  moulded  the  thoughts 
and  the  outlook  of  mankind. 

Few  men  think  for  themselves.  The 
thoughts  of  most  of  us  are  little  more  than 
imitations  and  adaptations  of  the  ideas  of 
stronger  minds.  The  influence  of  environment 
conditions,  if  it  does  not  control,  the  mind  of 
man.  So  it  comes  about  that  every  age  or 
generation  has  its  dominant  and  uppermost 
thoughts,  its  peculiar  way  of  looking  at  things 
and  its  peculiar  basis  of  opinion  on  which  its 


of  Social  Justice  35 

collective  action  and  its  social  regulations  rest. 
All  this  is  largely  unconscious.  The  average 
citizen  of  three  generations  ago  was  probably 
not  aware  that  he  was  an  extreme  individualist. 
The  average  citizen  of  to-day  is  not  conscious 
of  the  fact  that  he  has  ceased  to  be  one.  The 
man  of  three  generations  ago  had  certain  ideas 
which  he  held  to  be  axiomatic,  such  as  that  his 
house  was  his  castle,  and  that  property  was 
property  and  that  what  was  his  was  his.  But 
these  were  to  him  things  so  obvious  that  he 
could  not  conceive  any  reasonable  person  doubt- 
ing them.  So,  too,  with  the  man  of  to-day.  He 
has  come  to  believe  in  such  things  as  old  age 
pensions  and  national  insurance.  He  submits 
to  bachelor  taxes  and  he  pays  for  the  education 
of  other  people's  children;  he  speculates  much 
on  the  limits  of  inheritance,  and  he  even  med- 
itates profound  alterations  in  the  right  of  prop- 
erty in  land.  His  house  is  no  longer  his  castle. 
He  has  taken  down  its  fences,  and  "boule- 
varded"  its  grounds  till  it  merges  into  those  of 
his  neighbors.  Indeed  he  probably  does  not 
live  in  a  house  at  all,  but  in  a  mere  "apartment" 


36  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

or  subdivision  of  a  house  which  he  shares  with 
a  multiplicity  of  people.  Nor  does  he  any 
longer  draw  water  from  his  own  well  or  go  to 
bed  by  the  light  of  his  own  candle:  for  such 
services  as  these  his  life  is  so  mixed  up  with 
"franchises"  and  "public  utilities"  and  other 
things  unheard  of  by  his  own  great-grandfather, 
that  it  is  hopelessly  intertangled  with  that  of 
his  fellow  citizens.  In  fine,  there  is  little  left 
but  his  own  conscience  into  which  he  can  with- 
draw. 

Such  a  man  is  well  aware  that  times  have 
changed  since  his  great-grandfather's  day.  But 
he  is  not  aware  of  the  profound  extent  to  which 
his  own  opinions  have  been  affected  by  the 
changing  times.  He  is  no  longer  an  individ- 
ualist. He  has  become  by  brute  force  of  cir- 
cumstances a  sort  of  collectivist,  puzzled  only 
as  to  how  much  of  a  collectivist  to  be. 

Individualism  of  the  extreme  type  is,  there- 
fore, long  since  out  of  date.  To  attack  it  is 
merely  to  kick  a  dead  dog.  But  the  essential 
problem  of  to-day  is  to  know  how  far  we  are 
to  depart  from  its  principles.  There  are  those 


of  Social  Justice  37 

who  tell  us — and  they  number  many  millions — 
that  we  must  abandon  them  entirely.  Indus- 
trial society,  they  say,  must  be  reorganized 
from  top  to  bottom;  private  industry  must 
cease.  All  must  work  for  the  state;  only  in  a 
socialist  commonwealth  can  social  justice  be 
found.  There  are  others,  of  whom  the  pres- 
ent writer  is  one,  who  see  in  such  a  programme 
nothing  but  disaster :  yet  who  consider  that  the 
individualist  principle  of  "every  man  for  him- 
self" while  it  makes  for  national  wealth  and 
accumulated  power,  favors  overmuch  the  few 
at  the  expense  of  the  many,  puts  an  over-great 
premium  upon  capacity,  assigns  too  harsh  a 
punishment  for  easy  indolence,  and,  what  is 
worse,  exposes  the  individual  human  being  too 
cruelly  to  the  mere  accidents  of  birth  and  for- 
tune. Under  such  a  system,  in  short,  to  those 
who  have  is  given  and  from  those  who  have  not 
is  taken  away  even  that  which  they  have. 
There  are  others  again  who  still  view  individ- 
ualism just  as  the  vast  majority  of  our  great- 
grandfathers viewed  it,  as  a  system  hard  but 
just:  as  awarding  to  every  man  the  fruit  of  his 


38  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

own  labor  and  the  punishment  of  his  own  idle- 
ness, and  as  visiting,  in  accordance  with  the 
stern  but  necessary  ordination  of  our  existence, 
the  sins  of  the  father  upon  the  child. 

The  proper  starting  point,  then,  for  all  dis- 
cussion of  the  social  problem  is  the  considera- 
tion of  the  individualist  theory  of  industrial 
society.  This  grew  up,  as  all  the  world  knows, 
along  with  the  era  of  machinery  itself.  It  had 
its  counterpart  on  the  political  side  in  the 
rise  of  representative  democratic  government. 
Machinery,  industrial  liberty,  political  democ- 
racy— these  three  things  represent  the  basis  of 
the  progress  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  chief  exposition  of  the  system  is  found 
in  the  work  of  the  classical  economists — Adam 
Smith  and  his  followers  of  half  a  century — who 
created  the  modern  science  of  political  econ- 
omy. Beginning  as  controversialists  anxious  to 
overset  a  particular  system  of  trade  regulation, 
they  ended  by  becoming  the  exponents  of  a  new 
social  order.  Modified  and  amended  as  their 
system  is  in  its  practical  application,  it  still 


of  Social  Justice  39 

largely  conditions  our  outlook  to-day.  It  is  to 
this  system  that  we  must  turn. 

The  general  outline  of  the  classical  theory 
of  political  economy  is  so  clear  and  so  simple 
that  it  can  be  presented  within  the  briefest 
compass.  It  began  with  certain  postulates,  or 
assumptions,  to  a  great  extent  unconscious,  of 
the  conditions  to  which  it  applied.  It  assumed 
the  existence  of  the  state  and  of  contract.  It 
took  for  granted  the  existence  of  individual 
property,  in  consumption  goods,  in  capital 
goods,  and,  with  a  certain  hesitation,  in  land. 
The  last  assumption  was  not  perhaps  without 
misgivings :  Adam  Smith  was  disposed  to  look 
askance  at  landlords  as  men  who  gathered 
where  they  had  not  sown.  John  Stuart  Mill, 
as  is  well  known,  was  more  and  more  in- 
clined, with  advancing  reflection,  to  question  the 
sanctity  of  landed  property  as  the  basis  of  social 
institutions.  But  for  the  most  part  property, 
contract  and  the  coercive  state  were  funda- 
mental assumptions  with  the  classicists. 

With  this  there  went,  on  the  psychological 


40  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

side,  the  further  assumption  of  a  general  sel- 
fishness or  self-seeking  as  the  principal  motive 
of  the  individual  in  the  economic  sphere. 
Oddly  enough  this  assumption — the  most  war- 
rantable of  the  lot — was  the  earliest  to  fall  un- 
der disrepute.  The  plain  assertion  that  every 
man  looks  out  for  himself  (or  at  best  for  him- 
self and  his  immediate  family)  touches  the  ten- 
der conscience  of  humanity.  It  is  an  unpala- 
table truth.  None  the  less  it  is  the  most  nearly 
true  of  all  the  broad  generalizations  that  can 
be  attempted  in  regard  to  mankind. 

The  essential  problem  then  of  the  classicists 
was  to  ask  what  would  happen  if  an  industrial 
community,  possessed  of  the  modern  control 
over  machinery  and  power,  were  allowed  to  fol- 
low the  promptings  of  "enlightened  selfishness" 
in  an  environment  based  upon  free  contract  and 
the  right  of  property  in  land  and  goods.  The 
answer  was  of  the  most  cheering  description. 
The  result  would  be  a  progressive  amelioration 
of  society,  increasing  in  proportion  to  the  com- 
pleteness writh  which  the  fundamental  principles 
involved  were  allowed  to  act,  and  tending  ulti- 


of  Social  Justice  41 

mately  towards  something  like  a  social  millen- 
nium or  perfection  of  human  society.  One  eas- 
ily recalls  the  almost  reverent  attitude  of  Adam 
Smith  towards  this  system  of  industrial  liberty 
which  he  exalted  into  a  kind  of  natural  theol- 
ogy: and  the  way  in  which  Mill,  a  deist  but 
not  a  Christian,  was  able  to  fit  the  whole  appa- 
ratus of  individual  liberty  into  its  place  in  an 
ordered  universe.  The  world  "runs  of  itself," 
said  the  economist.  We  have  only  to  leave  it 
alone.  And  the  maxim  of  laissez  faire  became 
the  last  word  of  social  wisdom. 

The  argument  of  the  classicists  ran  thus.  If 
there  is  everywhere  complete  economic  free- 
dom, then  there  will  ensue  in  consequence  a 
regime  of  social  justice.  If  every  man  is  al- 
lowed to  buy  and  sell  goods,  labor  and  prop- 
erty, just  as  suits  his  own  interest,  then  the 
prices  and  wages  that  result  are  either  in  the 
exact  measure  of  social  justice  or,  at  least,  are 
perpetually  moving  towards  it.  The  price  of 
any  commodity  at  any  moment  is,  it  is  true,  a 
"market  price,"  the  resultant  of  the  demand 
and  the  supply;  but  behind  this  operates  con- 


42  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

tinually  the  inexorable  law  of  the  cost  of  pro- 
duction. Sooner  or  later  every  price  must 
represent  the  actual  cost  of  producing  the  com- 
modity concerned,  or,  at  least,  must  oscillate 
now  above  and  now  below  that  point  which  it 
is  always  endeavoring  to  meet.  For  if  tem- 
porary circumstances  force  the  price  well  above 
the  cost  of  producing  the  article  in  question, 
then  the  large  profits  to  be  made  induce  a 
greater  and  greater  production.  The  in- 
creased volume  of  the  supply  thus  produced 
inevitably  forces  down  the  price  till  it  sinks 
to  the  point  of  cost.  If  circumstances  (such, 
for  example,  as  miscalculation  and  an  over- 
great  supply)  depress  the  price  below  the  point 
of  cost,  then  the  discouragement  of  further  pro- 
duction presently  shortens  the  supply  and  brings 
the  price  up  again.  Price  is  thus  like  an 
oscillating  pendulum  seeking  its  point  of  rest, 
or  like  the  waves  of  the  sea  rising  and  falling 
about  its  level.  By  this  same  mechanism  the 
quantity  and  direction  of  production,  argued 
the  economists,  respond  automatically  to  the 
needs  of  humanity,  or,  at  least,  to  the  "effec- 


of  Social  Justice  43 

tive  demand,"  which  the  classicist  mistook  for 
the  same  thing.  Just  as  much  wheat  or  bricks 
or  diamonds  would  be  produced  as  the  world 
called  for;  to  produce  too  much  of  any  one 
thing  was  to  violate  a  natural  law;  the  falling 
price  and  the  resulting  temporary  loss  sternly 
rebuked  the  producer. 

In  the  same  way  the  technical  form  and 
mechanism  of  production  were  presumed  to  re- 
spond to  an  automatic  stimulus.  Inventions 
and  improved  processes  met  their  own  reward. 
Labor,  so  it  was  argued,  was  perpetually  be- 
ing saved  by  the  constant  introduction  of  new 
uses  of  machinery. 

By  a  parity  of  reasoning,  the  shares  received 
by  all  the  participants  and  claimants  in  the 
general  process  of  production  were  seen  to 
be  regulated  in  accordance  with  natural  law. 
Interest  on  capital  was  treated  merely  as  a 
particular  case  under  the  general  theory  of 
price.  It  was  the  purchase  price  needed  to 
call  forth  the  "saving"  (a  form,  so  to  speak, 
of  production)  which  brought  the  capital  into 
the  market.  The  "profits"  of  the  employer 


44  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

represented  the  necessary  price  paid  by  society 
for  his  services,  just  enough  and  not  more 
than  enough  to  keep  him  and  his  fellows  in 
operative  activity,  and  always  tending  under 
the  happy  operation  of  competition  to  fall  to 
the  minimum  consistent  with  social  progress. 

Rent,  the  share  of  the  land-owner,  offered  to 
the  classicist  a  rather  peculiar  case.  There 
was  here  a  physical  basis  of  surplus  over  cost. 
But,  granted  the  operation  of  the  factors  and 
forces  concerned,  rent  emerged  as  a  differential 
payment  to  the  fortunate  owner  of  the  soil.  It 
did  not  in  any  way  affect  prices  or  wages, 
which  were  rendered  neither  greater  nor  less 
thereby.  The  full  implication  of  the  rent  doc- 
trine and  its  relation  to  social  justice  remained 
obscured  to  the  eye  of  the  classical  economist; 
the  fixed  conviction  that  what  a  man  owns  is 
his  own  created  a  mist  through  which  the  light 
could  not  pass. 

Wages,  finally,  were  but  a  further  case  of 
value.  There  was  a  demand  for  labor,  rep- 
resented by  the  capital  waiting  to  remunerate 
it,  and  a  supply  of  labor  represented  by  the 


of  Social  Justice  45 

existing  and  increasing  working  class.  Hence 
wages,  like  all  other  shares  and  factors,  cor- 
responded, so  it  was  argued,  to  social  justice. 
Whether  wages  were  high  or  low,  whether 
hours  were  long  or  short,  at  least  the  laborer 
like  everybody  else  "got  what  was  coming  to 
him."  All  possibility  of  a  general  increase  of 
wages  depended  on  the  relation  of  available 
capital  to  the  numbers  of  the  working  men. 

Thus  the  system  as  applied  to  society  at 
large  could  be  summed  up  in  the  consoling 
doctrine  that  every  man  got  what  he  was  worth, 
and  was  worth  what  he  got;  that  industry  and 
energy  brought  their  own  reward;  that  national 
wealth  and  individual  welfare  were  one  and 
the  same;  that  all  that  was  needed  for  social 
progress  was  hard  work,  more  machinery,  more 
saving  of  labor  and  a  prudent  limitation  of 
the  numbers  of  the  population. 

The  application  of  such  a  system  to  legis- 
lation and  public  policy  was  obvious.  It  car- 
ried with  it  the  principle  of  laissez-faire.  The 
doctrine  of  international  free  trade,  albeit  the 
most  conspicuous  of  its  applications,  was  but 


46  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

one  case  under  the  general  law.  It  taught  that 
the  mere  organization  of  labor  was  powerless 
to  raise  wages;  that  strikes  were  of  no  avail, 
or  could  at  best  put  a  shilling  into  the  pocket 
of  one  artisan  by  taking  it  out  of  that  of  an- 
other; that  wages  and  prices  could  not  be  regu- 
lated by  law;  that  poverty  was  to  a  large  ex- 
tent a  biological  phenomenon  representing  the 
fierce  struggle  of  germinating  life  against  the 
environment  that  throttles  part  of  it.  The 
poor  were  like  the  fringe  of  grass  that  fades 
or  dies  where  it  meets  the  sand  of  the  desert. 
There  could  be  no  social  remedy  for  poverty 
except  the  almost  impossible  remedy  of  the 
limitation  of  life  itself.  Failing  this  the  econo- 
mist could  wash  his  hands  of  the  poor. 

These  are  the  days  of  relative  judgments 
and  the  classical  economy,  like  all  else,  must 
be  viewed  in  the  light  of  time  and  circum- 
stance. With  all  its  fallacies,  or  rather  its 
shortcomings,  it  served  a  magnificent  purpose. 
It  opened  a  road  never  before  trodden  from 
social  slavery  towards  social  freedom,  from 
the  mediaeval  autocratic  regime  of  fixed  caste 


of  Social  Justice  47 

and  hereditary  status  towards  a  regime  of  equal 
social  justice.  In  this  sense  the  classical  econ- 
omy was  but  the  fruition,  or  rather  represented 
the  final  consciousness  of  a  process  that  had 
been  going  on  for  centuries,  since  the  break- 
down of  feudalism  and  the  emancipation  of 
the  serf.  True,  the  goal  has  not  been  reached. 
The  vision  of  the  universal  happiness  seen  by 
the  economists  has  proved  a  mirage.  The  end 
of  the  road  is  not  in  sight.  But  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  in  the  long  pilgrimage  of  man- 
kind towards  social  betterment  the  economists 
guided  us  in  the  right  turning.  If  we  turn 
again  in  a  new  direction,  it  will  at  any  rate  not 
be  in  the  direction  of  a  return  to  autocratic 
medievalism. 

But  when  all  is  said  in  favor  of  its  historic 
usefulness,  the  failures  and  the  fallacies  of  nat- 
ural liberty  have  now  become  so  manifest  that 
the  system  is  destined  in  the  coming  era  to  be 
revised  from  top  to  bottom.  It  is  to  these 
failures  and  fallacies  that  attention  will  be 
drawn  in  the  next  chapter. 


III. — The  Failures  and  Fallacies  of 
Natural  Liberty 

THE  rewards  and  punishments  of  the 
economic  world  are  singularly  unequal. 
One  man  earns  as  much  in  a  week  or 
even  in  a  day  as  another  does  in  a  year. 
This  man  by  hard,  manual  labor  makes  only 
enough  to  pay  for  humble  shelter  and  plain 
food.  This  other  by  what  seems  a  congenial 
activity,  fascinating  as  a  game  of  chess,  acquires 
uncounted  millions.  A  third  stands  idle  in  the 
market  place  asking  in  vain  for  work.  A  fourth 
lives  upon  rent,  dozing  in  his  chair,  and  neither 
toils  nor  spins.  A  fifth  by  the  sheer  hazard  of 
a  lucky  "deal"  acquires  a  fortune  without  work 
at  all.  A  sixth,  scorning  to  work,  earns  noth- 
ing and  gets  nothing;  in  him  survives  a  prim- 
itive dislike  of  labor  not  yet  fully  "evoluted 
out;"  he  slips  through  the  meshes  of  civiliza- 

48 


The  Unsolved  Riddle  49 

tion  to  become  a  "tramp,"  cadges  his  food 
where  he  can,  suns  his  tattered  rags  when  it 
is  warm  and  shivers  when  it  is  cold,  migrating 
with  the  birds  and  reappearing  with  the  flowers 
of  spring. 

Yet  all  are  free.  This  is  the  distinguishing 
mark  of  them  as  children  of  our  era.  They 
may  work  or  stop.  There  is  no  compulsion 
from  without.  No  man  is  a  slave.  Each  has 
his  "natural  liberty,"  and  each  in  his  degree, 
great  or  small,  receives  his  allotted  reward. 

But  is  the  allotment  correct  and  the  reward 
proportioned  by  his  efforts?  Is  it  fair  or  un- 
fair, and  does  it  stand  for  the  true  measure  of 
social  justice? 

This  is  the  profound  problem  of  the  twen- 
tieth century. 

The  economists  and  the  leading  thinkers  of 
the  nineteenth  century  were  in  no  doubt  about 
this  question.  It  was  their  firm  conviction  that 
the  system  under  which  we  live  was,  in  its  broad 
outline,  a  system  of  even  justice.  They  held  it 
true  that  every  man  under  free  competition  and 
individual  liberty  is  awarded  just  what  he  is 


50  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

worth  and  is  worth  exactly  what  he  gets:  that 
the  reason  why  a  plain  laborer  is  paid  only  two 
or  three  dollars  a  day  is  because  he  only  "pro- 
duces" two  or  three  dollars  a  day:  and  that 
why  a  skilled  engineer  is  paid  ten  times  as  much 
is  because  he  "produces"  ten  times  as  much. 
His  work  is  "worth"  ten  times  that  of  the  plain 
laborer.  By  the  same  reasoning  the  salary  of 
a  corporation  president  who  receives  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars  a  year  merely  reflects  the  fact  that 
the  man  produces — earns — brings  in  to  the  cor- 
poration that  amount  or  even  more.  The  big 
salary  corresponds  to  the  big  efficiency. 

And  there  is  much  in  the  common  experience 
of  life  and  the  common  conduct  of  business  that 
seems  to  support  this  view.  It  is  undoubtedly 
true  if  we  look  at  any  little  portion  of  busi- 
ness activity  taken  as  a  fragment  by  itself.  On 
the  most  purely  selfish  grounds  I  may  find  that 
it  "pays"  to  hire  an  expert  at  a  hundred  dol- 
lars a  day,  and  might  find  that  it  spelled  ruin 
to  attempt  to  raise  the  wages  of  my  working- 
men  beyond  four  dollars  a  day.  Everybody 
knows  that  in  any  particular  business  at  any 


of  Social  Justice  51 

particular  place  and  time  with  prices  at  any 
particular  point,  there  is  a  wage  that  can  be 
paid  and  a  wage  that  can  not.  And  every- 
body, or  nearly  everybody,  bases  on  these  ob- 
vious facts  a  series  of  entirely  erroneous  con- 
clusions. Because  we  cannot  change  the  part 
we  are  apt  to  think  we  cannot  change  the  whole. 
Because  one  brick  in  the  wall  is  immovable, 
we  forget  that  the  wall  itself  might  be  rebuilt. 

The  single  employer  rightly  knows  that 
there  is  a  wage  higher  than  he  can  pay  and 
hours  shorter  than  he  can  grant.  But  are  the 
limits  that  frame  him  in,  real  and  necessary 
limits,  resulting  from  the  very  nature  of  things, 
or  are  they  mere  products  of  particular  circum- 
stances? This,  as  a  piece  of  pure  economics, 
does  not  interest  the  individual  employer  a  par- 
ticle. It  belongs  in  the  same  category  as  the 
question  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and 
other  profundities  that  have  nothing  to  do  with 
business.  But  to  society  at  large  the  question 
is  of  an  infinite  importance. 

Now  the  older  economists  taught,  and  the 
educated  world  for  about  a  century  believed, 


52  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

that  these  limitations  which  hedged  the  partic- 
ular employer  about  were  fixed  and  assigned  by 
natural  economic  law.  They  represented,  as 
has  been  explained,  the  operation  of  the  system 
of  natural  liberty  by  which  every  man  got  what 
he  is  worth.  And  it  is  quite  true  that  the  par- 
ticular employer  can  no  more  break  away  from 
these  limits  than  he  can  jump  out  of  his  own 
skin.  He  can  only  violate  them  at  the  ex- 
pense of  ceasing  to  be  an  economic  being  at  all 
and  degenerating  into  a  philanthropist. 

But  consider  for  a  moment  the  peculiar  na- 
ture of  the  limitations  themselves.  Every 
man's  limit  of  what  he  can  pay  and  what  he 
can  take,  of  how  much  he  can  offer  and  how 
much  he  will  'receive,  is  based  on  the  similar 
limitations  of  other  people.  They  are  recip- 
rocal to  one  another.  Why  should  one  factory 
owner  not  pay  ten  dollars  a  day  to  his  hands? 
Because  the  others  don't.  But  suppose  they  all 
do?  Then  the  output  could  not  be  sold  at  the 
present  price.  But  why  not  sell  the  produce 
at  a  higher  price?  Because  at  a  higher  price 
the  consumer  can't  afford  to  buy  it.  But  sup- 


of  Social  Justice  53 

pose  that  the  consumer,  for  the  things  which 
he  himself  makes  and  sells,  or  for  the  work 
which    he    performs,    receives    more?     What 
then?     The  whole  thing  begins  to  have  a  jig- 
saw look,  like  a  child's  toy  rack  with  wooden 
soldiers  on  it,  expanding  and  contracting.     One 
searches  in  vain  for  the  basis  on  which  the  re- 
lationship rests.     And  at  the  end  of  the  anal- 
ysis one  finds  nothing  but  a  mere  anarchical 
play  of  forces,  nothing  but  a  give-and-take  rest- 
ing  on    relative    bargaining    strength.     Every 
man  gets  what  he  can  and  gives  what  he  has  to. 
Observe  that  this  is  not  in  the  slightest  the 
conclusion  of  the  orthodox  economists.     Every 
man,  they  said,  gets  what  he  actually  makes, 
or,  by  exchange,  those  things  which  exactly  cor- 
respond to  it  as  regards  the  cost  of  making 
them — which  have,  to  use  the  key-word  of  the 
theory,  the  same  value.     Let  us  take  a  very 
simple  example.     If  I   go   fishing  with  a   net 
which  I  have  myself  constructed  out  of  fibers 
and  sticks,  and  if  I  catch  a  fish  and  if  I  then 
roast  the  fish  over  a  fire  which  I  have  made 
without  so  much  as  the  intervention  of  a  lucifer 


54  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

match,  then  it  is  I  and  I  alone  who  have  "pro- 
duced" the  roast  fish.  That  is  plain  enough. 
But  what  if  I  catch  the  fish  by  using  a  hired 
boat  and  a  hired  net,  or  by  buying  worms  as 
bait  from  some  one  who  has  dug  them?  Or 
what  if  I  do  not  fish  at  all,  but  get  my  roast 
fish  by  paying  for  it  a  part  of  the  wages  I  re- 
ceive for  working  in  a  saw  mill?  Here  are  a 
new  set  of  relationships.  How  much  of  the 
fish  is  "produced"  by  each  of  the  people  con- 
cerned? And  what  part  of  my  wages  ought  I 
to  pay  in  return  for  the  part  of  the  fish  that 
I  buy? 

Here  opens  up,  very  evidently,  a  perfect 
labyrinth  of  complexity.  But  it  was  the  laby- 
rinth for  which  the  earlier  economist  held,  so 
he  thought,  the  thread.  No  matter  how  dark 
the  passage,  he  still  clung  tight  to  it.  And  his 
thread  was  his  "fundamental  equation  of  value" 
whereby  each  thing  and  everything  is  sold  (or 
tends  to  be  sold)  under  free  competition  for 
exactly  its  cost  of  production.  There  it  was; 
as  simple  as  A.  B.  C. ;  making  the  cost  of  every- 
thing proportional  to  the  cost  of  everything 


of  Social  Justice  55 

else,  and  in  itself  natural  and  just;  explaining 
and  justifying  the  variations  of  wages  and  sal- 
aries on  what  seems  a  stern  basis  of  fact.  Here 
is  your  selling  price  as  a  starting  point.  Given 
that,  you  can  see  at  once  the  reason  for  the 
wages  paid  and  the  full  measure  of  the  pay- 
ment. To  pay  more  is  impossible.  To  pay 
less  is  to  invite  a  competition  that  will  force 
the  payment  of  more.  Or  take,  if  you  like,  the 
wages  as  the  starting  point :  there  you  are  again, 
— simplicity  itself :  the  selling  price  will  exactly 
and  nicely  correspond  to  cost.  True,  a  part  of 
the  cost  concerned  will  be  represented  not  by 
wages,  but  by  cost  of  materials;  but  these,  on 
analysis,  dissolve  into  past  wages.  Hence  the 
whole  process  and  its  explanation  revolves 
around  this  simple  fundamental  equation  that 
selling  value  equals  the  cost  of  production. 

This  was  the  central  part  of  the  economic 
structure.  It  was  the  keystone  of  the  arch. 
If  it  holds,  all  holds.  Knock  it  out  and  the 
whole  edifice  falls  into  fragments. 

A  technical  student  of  the  schools  would  di- 
gress here,  to  the  great  confusion  of  the  reader, 


56  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

into  a  discussion  of  the  controversy  in  the  eco- 
nomic cloister  between  the  rival  schools  of  econ- 
omists as  to  whether  cost  governs  value  or 
value  governs  cost.  The  point  needs  no  dis- 
cussion here,  but  just  such  fleeting  passing  men- 
tion as  may  indicate  that  the  writer  is  well  and 
wearily  conversant  with  it. 

The  fundamental  equation  of  the  economist, 
then,  is  that  the  value  of  everything  is  propor- 
tionate to  its  cost.  It  requires  no  little  hardi- 
hood to  say  that  this  proposition  is  a  fallacy. 
It  lays  one  open  at  once,  most  illogically,  to  the 
charge  of  being  a  socialist.  In  sober  truth  it 
might  as  well  lay  one  open  to  the  charge  of 
being  an  ornithologist.  I  will  not,  therefore, 
say  that  the  proposition  that  the  value  of  every- 
thing equals  the  cost  of  production  is  false.  I 
will  say  that  it  is  true;  in  fact,  that  is  just  as  true 
as  that  two  and  two  make  four :  exactly  as  true 
as  that,  but  let  it  be  noted  most  profoundly, 
only  as  true  as  that.  In  other  words,  it  is  a 
truism,  mere  equation  in  terms,  telling  nothing 
whatever.  When  I  say  that  two  and  two  make 
four  I  find,  after  deep  thought,  that  I  have 


of  Social  Justice  57 

really  said  nothing,  or  nothing  that  was  not  al- 
ready said  at  the  moment  I  defined  two  and 
defined  four.  The  new  statement  that  two  and 
two  make  four  adds  nothing.  So  with  the  ma- 
jestic equation  of  the  cost  of  production.  It 
means,  as  far  as  social  application  goes,  as  far 
as  any  moral  significance  or  bearing  on  social 
reform  and  the  social  outlook  goes,  absolutely 
nothing.  It  is  not  in  itself  fallacious;  how 
could  it  be?  But  all  the  social  inferences 
drawn  from  it  are  absolute,  complete  and  mali- 
cious fallacies. 

Any  socialist  who  says  this,  is  quite  right. 
Where  he  goes  wrong  is  when  he  tries  to  build 
up  as  truth  a  set  of  inferences  more  fallacious 
and  more  malicious  still. 

But  the  central  economic  doctrine  of  cost  can 
not  be  shaken  by  mere  denunciation.  Let  us 
examine  it  and  see  what  is  the  matter  with  it. 
We  restate  the  equation. 

Under  perfectly  free  competition  the  value 
or  selling  price  of  everything  equals,  or  is  per- 
petually tending  to  equal,  the  cost  of  Its  pro- 
duction. This  is  the  proposition  itself,  and  the 


58  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

inferences  derived  from  it  are  that  there  is  a 
"natural  price"  of  everything,  and  that  all  "nat- 
ural prices"  are  proportionate  to  cost  and  to 
one  another;  that  all  wages,  apart  from  tem- 
porary fluctuations,  are  derived  from,  and  lim- 
ited by,  the  natural  prices  paid  for  the  things 
made :  that  all  payments  for  the  use  of  capital 
(interest)  are  similarly  derived  and  similarly 
limited;  and  that  consequently  the  whole  eco- 
nomic arrangement,  by  giving  to  each  person 
exactly  and  precisely  the  fruit  of  his  own  labor, 
conforms  exactly  to  social  justice. 

Now  the  trouble  with  the  main  proposition 
just  quoted  is  that  each  side  of  the  equation  is 
used  as  the  measure  of  the  other.  In  order  to 
show  what  natural  price  is,  we  add  up  all  the 
wages  that  have  been  paid,  and  declare  that 
to  be  the  cost  and  then  say  that  the  cost  gov- 
erns the  price.  Then  if  we  are  asked  why  are 
wages  what  they  are,  we  turn  the  argument 
backward  and  say  that  since  the  selling  price 
is  so  and  so  the  wages  that  can  be  paid  out  of 
it  only  amount  to  such  and  such.  This  ex- 
plains nothing.  It  is  a  mere  argument  in  a  cir- 


of  Social  Justice  59 

cle.  It  is  as  if  one  tried  to  explain  why  one 
blade  of  a  pair  of  scissors  is  four  inches  long 
by  saying  that  it  has  to  be  the  same  length  as 
the  other.  This  is  quite  true  of  either  blade 
if  one  takes  the  length  of  the  other  for  granted, 
but  as  applied  to  the  explanation  of  the  length 
of  the  scissors  it  is  worse  than  meaningless. 

This  reasoning  may  seem  to  many  persons 
mere  casuistry,  mere  sophistical  juggling  with 
Words.  After  all,  they  say,  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  relative  cost,  relative  difficulty  of  mak- 
ing things,  a  difference  which  rests  upon  a  phys- 
ical basis.  To  make  one  thing  requires  a  lot 
of  labor  and  trouble  and  much  skill:  to  make 
another  thing  requires  very  little  labor  and  no 
skill  out  of  the  common.  Here  then  is  your 
basis  of  value,  obvious  and  beyond  argument. 
A  primitive  savage  makes  a  bow  and  arrow  in 
a  day:  it  takes  him  a  fortnight  to  make  a  bark 
canoe.  On  that  fact  rests  the  exchange  value 
between  the  two.  The  relative  quantity  of  la- 
bor embodied  in  each  object  is  the  basis  of  its 
value. 

This  line  of  reasoning  has  a  very  convmcfhg 


60  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

sound.  It  appears  in  nearly  every  book  on  eco- 
nomic theory  from  Adam  Smith  and  Ricardo 
till  to-day.  "Labor  alone,"  wrote  Smith, 
"never  varying  in  its  own  value  is  above  the 
ultimate  and  real  standard  by  which  the  value 
of  all  commodities  can  at  all  times  and  places 
be  estimated  and  compared." 

But  the  idea  that  quantity  of  labor  governs 
value  will  not  stand  examination  for  a  moment. 
What  is  quantity  of  labor  and  how  is  it  meas- 
ured? As  long  as  we  draw  our  illustrations 
from  primitive  life  where  one  man's  work  is 
much  the  same  as  another's  and  where  all  oper- 
ations are  simple,  we  seem  easily  able  to  meas- 
ure and  compare.  One  day  is  the  same  as  an- 
other and  one  man  about  as  capable  as  his  fel- 
low. But  in  the  complexity  of  modern  indus- 
trial life  such  a  calculation  no  longer  applies: 
the  differences  of  skill,  of  native  ingenuity,  and 
technical  preparation  become  enormous.  The 
hour's  work  of  a  common  laborer  is  not  the 
same  thing  as  the  hour's  work  of  a  watchmaker 
mending  a  watch,  or  of  an  engineer  directing 
the  building  of  a  bridge,  or  of  an  architect 


of  Social  Justice  61 

drawing  a  plan.  There  is  no  way  of  reducing 
these  hours  to  a  common  basis.  We  may  think, 
if  we  like,  that  the  quantity  of  labor  ought  to 
be  the  basis  of  value  and  exchange.  Such  is 
always  the  dream  of  the  socialist.  But  on  a 
closer  view  it  is  shattered  like  any  other  dream. 
For  we  have,  alas,  no  means  of  finding  out 
what  the  quantity  of  labor  is  and  how  it  can 
be  measured.  We  cannot  measure  it  in  terms 
of  time.  We  have  no  calculus  for  comparing 
relative  amounts  of  skill  and  energy.  We  can 
not  measure  it  by  the  amount  of  its  contribution 
to  the  product,  for  that  is  the  very  matter  that 
we  want  to  discover. 

What  the  economist  does  is  to  slip  out  of 
the  difficulty  altogether  by  begging  the  whole 
question.  He  deliberately  measures  the  quan- 
tity of  labor  by  what  is  paid  for  it.  Skilled 
labor  is  worth,  let  us  say,  three  times  as  much 
as  common  labor;  and  brain  work,  speaking 
broadly,  is  worth  several  times  as  much  again. 
Hence  by  adding  up  all  the  wages  and  salaries 
paid  we  get  something  that  seems  to  indicate 
the  total  quantity  of  labor,  measured  not  sim- 


62  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

ply  in  time,  but  with  an  allowance  for  skill  and 
technical  competency.  By  describing  this  al- 
lowance as  a  coefficient  we  can  give  our  state- 
ment a  false  air  of  mathematical  certainty  and 
so  muddle  up  the  essential  question  that  the 
truth  is  lost  from  sight  like  a  pea  under  a  thim- 
ble. Now  you  see  it  and  now  you  don't.  The 
thing  is,  in  fact,  a  mere  piece  of  intellectual  con- 
juring. The  conjurer  has  slipped  the  phrase, 
"quantity  of  labor,"  up  his  sleeve,  and  when  it 
reappears  it  has  turned  into  "the  expense  of 
hiring  labor."  This  is  a  quite  different  thing. 
But  as  both  conceptions  are  related  somehow  to 
the  idea  of  cost,  the  substitution  is  never  dis- 
covered. 

On  this  false  basis  a  vast  structure  is  erected. 
All  prices,  provided  that  competition  is  free, 
are  made  to  appear  as  the  necessary  result  of 
natural  forces.  They  are  "natural"  or  "nor- 
mal" prices.  All  wages  are  explained,  and  low 
wages  are  exonerated,  on  what  seems  to  be  an 
undeniable  ground  of  fact.  They  are  what 
they  are.  You  may  wish  them  otherwise,  but 
they  are  not.  As  a  philanthropist,  you  may 


of  Social  Justice  63 

feel  sorry  that  a  humble  laborer  should  work 
through  a  long  day  to  receive  two  dollars,  but 
as  an  economist  you  console  yourself  with  the 
reflection  that  that  is  all  he  produces.  You 
may  at  times,  as  a  sentimentalist,  wonder 
whether  the  vast  sums  drawn  as  interest  on 
capital  are  consistent  with  social  fairness;  but 
if  it  is  shown  that  interest  is  simply  the  "nat- 
ural price"  of  capital  representing  the  actual 
"productive  power"  of  the  capital,  there  is 
nothing  further  to  say.  You  may  have  similar 
qualms  over  rent  and  the  Tightness  and  wrong- 
ness  of  it.  The  enormous  "unearned  incre- 
ment" that  accrues  for  the  fortunate  owner  of 
land  who  toils  not  neither  spins  to  obtain  it, 
may  seem  difficult  of  justification.  But  after 
all,  land  is  only  one  particular  case  of  owner- 
ship under  the  one  and  the  same  system.  The 
rent  for  which  the  owner  can  lease  it,  emerges 
simply  as  a  consequence  of  the  existing  state  of 
wages  and  prices.  High  rent,  says  the  econo- 
mist, does  not  make  big  prices:  it  merely  fol- 
lows as  a  consequence  or  result  of  them.  Dear 
bread  is  not  caused  by  the  high  rents  paid  by 


64  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

tenant  farmers  for  the  land:  the  train  of  cause 
and  effect  runs  in  the  contrary  direction.  And 
the  selling  price  of  land  is  merely  a  consequence 
of  its  rental  value,  a  simple  case  of  capitaliza- 
tion of  annual  return  into  a  present  sum.  City 
land,  though  it  looks  different  from  farm  land, 
is  seen  in  the  light  of  this  same  analysis,  to  earn 
its  rent  in  just  the  same  way.  The  high  rent 
of  a  Broadway  store,  says  the  economist,  does 
not  add  a  single  cent  to  the  price  of  the  things 
sold  in  it.  It  is  because  prices  are  what  they 
are  that  the  rent  is  and  can  be  paid.  Hence 
on  examination  the  same  canon  of  social  justice 
that  covers  and  explains  prices,  wages,  and  in- 
terest applies  with  perfect  propriety  to  rent. 

Or  finally,  to  take  the  strongest  case  of  all, 
one  may,  as  a  citizen,  feel  apprehension  at  times 
at  the  colossal  fortune  of  a  Carnegie  or  a  Rock- 
efeller. For  it  does  seem  passing  strange  that 
one  human  being  should  control  as  property  the 
mass  of  coin,  goods,  houses,  factories,  land  and 
mines,  represented  by  a  billion  dollars ;  stranger 
still  that  at  his  death  he  should  write  upon  a 
piece  of  paper  his  commands  as  to  what  his  sur- 


of  Social  Justice  65 

viving  fellow  creatures  are  to  do  with  it.  But 
if  it  can  be  shown  to  be  true  that  Mr.  Rocke- 
feller "made"  his  fortune  in  the  same  sense  that 
a  man  makes  a  log  house  by  felling  trees  and 
putting  them  one  upon  another,  then  the  for- 
tune belongs  to  Mr.  Rockefeller  in  the  same 
way  as  the  log  house  belongs  to  the  pioneer. 
And  if  the  social  inferences  that  are  drawn 
from  the  theory  of  natural  liberty  and  natural 
value  are  correct,  the  millionaire  and  the  land- 
lord, the  plutocrat  and  the  pioneer,  the  wage 
earner  and  the  capitalist,  have  each  all  the  right 
to  do  what  he  will  with  his  own.  For  every 
man  in  this  just  world  gets  what  is  coming  to 
him.  He  gets  what  he  is  worth,  and  he  is 
worth  what  he  gets. 

But  if  one  knocks  out  the  keystone  of  the 
arch  in  the  form  of  a  proposition  that  natural 
value  conforms  to  the  cost  of  production,  then 
the  whole  edifice  collapses  and  must  be  set  up 
again,  upon  another  plan  and  on  another  foun- 
dation, stone  by  stone. 


IV. — Work  and  Wages 


WAGES  and  prices,  then,  if  the  ar- 
gument recited  in  the  preceding 
chapter  of  this  series  holds  good, 
do  not  under  free  competition  tend 
towards  social  justice.  It  is  not  true  that  every 
man  gets  what  he  produces.  It  is  not  true  that 
enormous  salaries  represent  enormous  produc- 
tive services  and  that  humble  wages  correspond 
to  a  humble  contribution  to  the  welfare  of  so- 
ciety. Prices,  wages,  salaries,  interest,  rent 
and  profits  do  not,  if  left  to  themselves,  follow 
the  simple  law  of  natural  justice.  To  think 
so  is  an  idle  dream,  the  dream  of  the  quietist 
who  may  slumber  too  long  and  be  roused  to  a 
rude  awakening  or  perish,  perhaps,  in  his  sleep. 
His  dream  is  not  so  dangerous  as  the  contrasted 
dream  of  the  socialist,  now  threatening  to  walk 

66 


The  Unsolved  Riddle 


abroad  in  his  sleep,  but  both  in  their  degree  are 
dreams  and  nothing  more. 

The  real  truth  is  that  prices  and  wages  are 
all  the  various  payments  from  hand  to  hand  in 
industrial  society,  are  the  outcome  of  a  com- 
plex of  competing  forces  that  are  not  based 
upon  justice  but  upon  "economic  strength." 
To  elucidate  this  it  is  necessary  to  plunge  into 
the  jungle  of  pure  economic  theory.  The  way 
is  arduous.  There  are  no  flowers  upon  the 
path.  And  out  of  this  thicket,  alas,  no  two 
people  ever  emerge  hand  in  hand  in  concord. 
Yet  it  is  a  path  that  must  be  traversed.  Let 
us  take,  then,  as  a  beginning  the  very  simplest 
case  of  the  making  of  a  price.  It  is  the  one 
which  is  sometimes  called  In  books  on  economics 
the  case  of  an  unique  monopoly.  Suppose  that 
I  offer  for  sale  the  manuscript  of  the  Pickwick 
Papers,  or  Shakespere's  skull,  or,  for  the  mat- 
ter of  that,  the  skull  of  John  Smith,  what  is 
the  sum  that  I  shall  receive  for  it?  It  is  the 
utmost  that  any  one  is  willing  to  give  for  it. 
That  is  all  one  can  say  about  it.  There  is  no 
question  here  of  cost  or  what  I  paid  for  the 


68  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

article  or  of  anything  else  except  the  amount 
of  the  willingness  to  pay  on  the  part  of  the 
highest  bidder.  It  would  be  possible,  indeed, 
for  a  bidder  to  take  the  article  from  me  by 
force.  But  this  we  presume  to  be  prevented 
by  the  law,  and  for  this  reason  we  referred 
above  not  to  the  physical  strength,  but  to  the 
"economic  strength"  of  the  parties  to  a  bargain. 
By  this  is  meant  the  relation  that  arises  out  of 
the  condition  of  the  supply  and  the  demand, 
the  willingness  or  eagerness,  or  the  sheer  neces- 
sity, of  the  buyers  and  the  sellers.  People  may 
offer  much  because  the  thing  to  be  acquired  is 
an  absolute  necessity  without  which  they  per- 
ish; a  drowning  man  would  sell  all  that  he  had 
for  a  life  belt.  Or  they  may  offer  much 
through  the  sheer  abundance  of  their  other 
possessions.  A  millionaire  might  offer  more 
for  a  life  belt  as  a  souvenir  than  a  drowning 
man  could  pay  for  it  to  save  his  life. 

Yet  out  of  any  particular  conjunction  be- 
tween desires  on  the  one  hand  and  goods  or 
services  on  the  other  arises  a  particular  equa- 
tion of  demand  and  supply,  represented  by  a 


of  Social  Justice  69 

particular  price.  All  of  this,  of  course,  is 
A.  B.  C.,  and  I  am  not  aware  that  anybody 
doubts  it. 

Now  let  us  make  the  example  a  little  more 
elaborate.  Suppose  that  one  single  person 
owned  all  the  food  supply  of  a  community  iso- 
lated from  the  outside  world.  The  price  which 
he  could  exact  would  be  the  full  measure  of  all 
the  possessions  of  his  neighbors  up  to  the  point 
at  least  where  they  would  commit  suicide  rather 
than  pay.  True,  in  such  a  case  as  this,  "eco- 
nomic strength"  would  probably  be  broken 
down  by  the  intrusion  of  physical  violence. 
But  in  so  far  as  it  held  good  the  price  of  food 
would  be  based  upon  it. 

Prices  such  as  are  indicated  here  were  dis- 
missed by  the  earlier  economist  as  mere  eco- 
nomic curiosities.  John  Stuart  Mill  has  some- 
thing to  say  about  the  price  of  a  "music  box 
in  the  wilds  of  Lake  Superior,"  which,  as  he 
perceived,  would  not  be  connected  with  the  ex- 
pense of  producing  it,  but  might  be  vastly  more 
or  perhaps  decidedly  less.  But  Mill  might 
have  said  the  same  thing  about  the  price  of  a 


70  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

music  box,  provided  it  was  properly  patented, 
anywhere  at  all.  For  the  music  box  and 
Shakespere's  skull  and  the  corner  in  wheat  are 
all  merely  different  kinds  of  examples  of  the 
things  called  a  monopoly  sale. 

Now  let  us  change  the  example  a  little  fur- 
ther. Suppose  that  the  monopolist  has  for  sale 
not  simply  a  fixed  and  definite  quantity  of  a  cer- 
tain article,  but  something  which  he  can  pro- 
duce in  larger  quantities  as  desired.  At  what 
price  will  he  now  sell?  If  he  offers  the  article 
at  a  very  high  price  only  a  few  people  will  take 
it:  if  he  lowers  the  price  there  will  be  more 
and  more  purchasers.  His  interest  seems  di- 
vided. He  will  want  to  put  the  price  as  high 
as  possible  so  that  the  profit  on  each  single 
article  (over  what  it  costs  him  to  produce  it) 
will  be  as  great  as  possible.  But  he  will  also 
want  to  make  as  many  sales  as  he  possibly  can, 
which  will  induce  him  to  set  the  price  low 
enough  to  bring  in  new  buyers.  But,  of  course, 
if  he  puts  the  price  so  low  that  it  only  covers 
the  cost  of  making  the  goods  his  profit  is  all 
gone  and  the  mere  multiplicity  of  sales  is  no 


of  Social  Justice  71 

good  to  him.  He  must  try  therefore  to  find 
a  point  of  maximum  profit  where,  having  in 
view  both  the  number  of  sales  and  the  profit 
over  cost  on  each  sale  the  net  profit  is  at  its 
greatest.  This  gives  us  the  fundamental  law 
of  monopoly  price.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  un- 
der modern  conditions  of  production  the  cost 
of  manufacture  per  article  decreases  to  a  great 
extent  in  proportion  as  a  larger  and  larger 
number  is  produced  and  thus  the  widening  of 
the  sale  lowers  the  proportionate  cost.  In  any 
particular  case,  therefore,  it  may  turn  out  that 
the  price  that  suits  the  monopolist's  own  inter- 
est is  quite  a  low  price,  one  such  as  to  allow  for 
an  enormous  quantity  of  sales  and  a  very  low 
cost  of  manufacture.  This,  we  say,  may  be  the 
case.  But  it  is  not  so  of  necessity.  In  and  of 
itself  the  monopoly  price  corresponds  to  the 
monopolist's  profit  and  not  to  cheapness  of  sale. 
The  price  may  be  set  far  above  the  cost. 

And  now  notice  the  peculiar  relation  that  is 
set  up  between  the  monopolist's  production  and 
the  satisfaction  of  human  wants.  In  propor- 
tion as  the  quantity  produced  is  increased  the 


72  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

lower  must  the  price  be  set  in  order  to  sell  the 
whole  output.  If  the  monopolist  insisted  on 
turning  out  more  and  more  of  his  goods,  the 
price  that  people  would  give  would  fall  until 
it  barely  covered  the  cost,  then  till  it  was  less 
than  cost,  then  to  a  mere  fraction  of  the  cost 
and  finally  to  nothing  at  all.  In  other  words, 
if  one  produces  a  large  enough  quantity  of  any- 
thing it  becomes  worthless.  It  loses  all  its 
value  just  as  soon  as  there  is  enough  of  it  to 
satisfy,  and  over-satisfy  the  wants  of  humanity. 
Thus  if  the  world  produces  three  and  a  half 
billion  bushels  of  wheat  it  can  be  sold,  let  us 
say,  at  two  dollars  a  bushel;  but  if  it  produced 
twice  as  much  it  might  well  be  found  that  it 
would  only  sell  for  fifty  cents  a  bushel.  The 
value  of  the  bigger  supply  as  a  total  would 
actually  be  less  than  that  of  the  smaller.  And 
if  the  supply  were  big  enough  it  would  be 
worth,  in  the  economic  sense,  just  nothing  at 
all.  This  peculiarity  is  spoken  of  in  economic 
theory  as  the  paradox  of  value.  It  is  referred 
to  in  the  older  books  either  as  an  economic  cu- 
riosity or  as  a  mere  illustration  in  extreme 


of  Social  Justice  73 

terms  of  the  relation  of  supply  to  price.  Thus 
in  many  books  the  story  is  related  of  how  the 
East  India  Companies  used  at  times  deliber- 
ately to  destroy  a  large  quantity  of  tea  in  order 
that  by  selling  a  lesser  amount  they  might  reap 
a  larger  profit  than  by  selling  a  greater. 

But  in  reality  this  paradox  of  value  is  the 
most  fundamental  proposition  in  economic  sci- 
ence. Precisely  here  is  found  the  key  to  the 
operation  of  the  economic  society  in  which  we 
live.  The  world's  production  is  aimed  at  pro- 
ducing "values,"  not  in  producing  plenty.  If 
by  some  mad  access  of  misdirected  industry  we 
produced  enough  and  too  much  of  everything, 
our  whole  machinery  of  buying  and  selling 
would  break  down.  This  indeed  does  happen 
constantly  on  a  small  scale  in  the  familiar  phe- 
nomenon of  over-production.  But  in  the  or- 
ganization In  which  we  live  over-production 
tends  to  check  itself  at  once.  If  the  world's 
machinery  threatens  to  produce  a  too  great 
plenty  of  any  particular  thing,  then  it  turns  it- 
self towards  producing  something  else  of  which 
there  is  not  yet  enough.  This  is  done  quite 


74s  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

unconsciously  without  any  philanthropic  intent 
on  the  part  of  the  individual  producer  and  with- 
out any  general  direction  in  the  way  of  a  social 
command.  The  machine  does  it  of  itself. 
When  there  is  enough  the  wheels  slacken  and 
stop.  This  sounds  at  first  hearing  most  ad- 
mirable. But  let  it  be  noted  that  the  "enough" 
here  in  question  does  not  mean  enough  to  sat- 
isfy human  wants.  In  fact  it  means  precisely 
the  converse.  It  means  enough  not  to  satisfy 
them,  and  to  leave  the  selling  price  of  the  things 
made  at  the  point  of  profit. 

Let  it  be  observed  also  that  we  have  hith- 
erto been  speaking  as  if  all  things  were  pro- 
duced under  a  monopoly.  The  objection  might 
at  once  be  raised  that  with  competitive  pro- 
ducers the  price  will  also  keep  falling  down 
towards  cost  and  will  not  be  based  upon  the 
point  of  maximum  profit.  We  shall  turn  to 
this  objection  in  a  moment.  But  one  or  two 
other  points  must  be  considered  before  do- 
ing so. 

In  the  first  place  in  following  out  such  an 
argument  as  the  present  in  regard  to  the  pecu- 


of  Social  Justice  75 

liar  shortcomings  of  the  system  under  which 
we  live,  it  is  necessary  again  and  again  to  warn 
the  reader  against  a  hasty  conclusion  to  the 
possibilities  of  altering  and  amending  it.  The 
socialist  reads  such  criticism  as  the  above  with 
impatient  approval.  "Very  well,"  he  says, 
"the  whole  organization  is  wrong  and  works 
badly.  Now  let  us  abolish  it  altogether  and 
make  a  better  one."  But  in  doing  so  he  begs 
the  whole  question  at  issue.  The  point  is,  can 
we  make  a  better  one  or  must  we  be  content 
with  patching  up  the  old  one?  Take  an  illus- 
tration. Scientists  tell  us  that  from  the  point 
of  view  of  optics  the  human  eye  is  a  clumsy 
instrument  poorly  contrived  for  its  work.  A 
certain  great  authority  once  said  that  if  he  had 
made  it  he  would  have  been  ashamed  of  it. 
This  may  be  true.  But  the  eye  unfortunately 
is  all  we  have  to  see  by.  If  we  destroy  our 
eyes  in  the  hope  of  making  better  ones  we  may 
go  blind.  The  best  that  we  can  do  is  to  im- 
prove our  sight  by  adding  a  pair  of  spectacles. 
So  it  is  with  the  organization  of  society.  Faulty 
though  it  is,  it  does  the  work  after  a  certain 


76  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

fashion.  We  may  apply  to  it  with  advantage 
the  spectacles  of  social  reform,  but  what  the 
socialist  offers  us  is  total  blindness.  But  of 
this  presently. 

To  return  to  the  argument.  Let  us  consider 
next  what  wages  the  monopolist  in  the  cases 
described  above  will  have  to  pay.  We  take  for 
granted  that  he  will  only  pay  as  much  as  he  has 
to.  How  much  will  this  be?  Clearly  enough 
it  will  depend  altogether  on  the  number  of 
available  working  men  capable  of  doing  the 
work  in  question  and  the  situation  in  which  they 
find  themselves.  It  is  again  a  case  of  relative 
"economic  strength."  The  situation  may  be 
altogether  in  favor  of  the  employer  or  alto- 
gether in  favor  of  the  men,  or  may  occupy  a 
middle  ground.  If  the  men  arc  so  numerous 
that  there  are  more  of  them  than  are  needed 
for  the  work,  and  if  there  is  no  other  occupa- 
tion for  them  they  must  accept  a  starvation 
wage.  If  they  are  so  few  in  number  that  they 
can  all  be  employed,  and  if  they  are  so  well 
organized  as  to  act  together,  they  can  in  their 
turn  exact  any  wage  up  to  the  point  that  leaves 


of  Social  Justice  77 

no  profit  for  the  employer  himself  at  all.  In- 
deed for  a  short  time  wages  might  even  pass 
this  point,  the  monopolist  employer  being  will- 
ing (for  various  reasons,  all  quite  obvious)  ac- 
tually to  pay  more  as  wages  than  he  gets  as  re- 
turn and  to  carry  on  business  at  a  loss  for  the 
sake  of  carrying  it  on  at  all.  Clearly,  then, 
wages,  as  Adam  Smith  said,  "are  the  result  of 
a  dispute"  in  which  either  party  must  be  pushed 
to  the  wall.  The  employer  may  have  to  pay 
so  much  that  there  is  nothing  or  practically 
nothing  left  for  himself,  or  so  little  that  his 
workmen  can  just  exist  and  no  more.  These 
are  the  upward  and  downward  limits  of  the 
wages  in  the  cases  described. 

It  is  therefore  obvious  that  if  all  the  indus- 
tries in  the  world  were  carried  on  as  a  series 
of  separate  monopolies,  there  would  be  exactly 
the  kind  of  rivalry  or  competition  of  forces  rep- 
resented by  the  consumer  insisting  on  paying  as 
little  as  possible,  the  producer  charging  the 
most  profitable  price  and  paying  the  lowest 
wage  that  he  could,  and  the  wage  earner  de- 
manding the  highest  wage  that  he  could  get. 


78  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

The  equilibrium  would  be  an  unstable  one.  It 
would  be  constantly  displaced  and  shifted  by 
the  movement  of  all  sorts  of  social  forces — by 
changes  of  fashion,  by  abundance  or  scarcity  of 
crops,  by  alterations  in  the  technique  of  indus- 
try and  by  the  cohesion  or  the  slackening  of  the 
organization  of  any  group  of  workers.  But 
the  balanced  forces  once  displaced  would  be 
seen  constantly  to  come  to  an  equilibrium  at  a 
new  point. 

All  this  has  been  said  of  industry  under 
monopoly.  But  it  will  be  seen  to  apply  in  its 
essentials  to  what  we  call  competitive  industry. 
Here  indeed  certain  new  features  come  in. 
Not  one  employer  but  many  produce  each  kind 
of  article.  And,  as  far  as  each  employer  can 
see  by  looking  at  his  own  horizon,  what  he 
does  is  merely  to  produce  as  much  as  he  can 
sell  at  a  price  that  pays  him.  Since  all  the 
other  employers  are  doing  this,  there  will  be, 
under  competition,  a  constant  tendency  to  cut 
the  prices  down  to  the  lowest  that  is  consistent 
with  what  the  employer  has  to  pay  as  wages 
and  interest.  This  point,  which  was  called  by 


of  Social  Justice 


the  orthodox  economists  the  "cost,"  is  not  in 
any  true  and  fundamental  sense  of  the  words 
the  "cost"  at  all.  It  is  merely  a  limit  repre- 
sented by  what  the  other  parties  to  the  bargain 
are  able  to  exact.  The  whole  situation  is  in  a 
condition  of  unstable  equilibrium  in  which  the 
conflicting  forces  represented  by  the  interests 
of  the  various  parties  pull  in  different  direc- 
tions. The  employers  in  any  one  line  of  in- 
dustry and  all  their  wage  earners  and  salaried 
assistants  have  one  and  the  same  interest  as 
against  the  consumer.  They  want  the  selling 
price  to  be  as  high  as  possible.  But  the  em- 
ployers are  against  one  another  as  wanting, 
each  of  them,  to  make  as  many  sales  as  possible, 
and  each  and  all  the  employers  are  against  the 
wage  earners  in  wanting  to  pay  as  low  wages 
as  possible.  If  all  the  employers  unite,  the  sit- 
uation turns  to  a  monopoly,  and  the  price  paid 
by  the  consumer  is  settled  on  the  monopoly  ba- 
sis already  described.  The  employers  can  then 
dispute  it  out  with  their  working  men  as  to  how 
much  wages  shall  be.  If  the  employers  are  not 
united,  then  at  each  and  every  moment  they  are 


80  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

in  conflict  both  with  the  consumer  and  with 
their  wage  earners.  Thus  the  whole  scene  of 
industry  represents  a  vast  and  unending  con- 
flict, a  fermentation  in  which  the  moving  bub- 
bles crowd  for  space,  expanding  and  breaking 
one  against  the  other.  There  is  no  point  of 
rest.  There  Is  no  real  fixed  "cost"  acting  as  a 
basis.  Anything  that  any  one  person  or  group 
of  persons — worker  or  master,  landlord  or  cap- 
italist— is  able  to  exact  owing  to  the  existing 
conditions  of  demand  or  supply,  becomes  a 
"cost"  from  the  point  of  view  of  all  the  others. 
There  is  nothing  in  this  "cost"  which  propor- 
tions to  it  the  quantity  of  labor,  or  of  time,  or 
of  skill  or  of  any  other  measure  physical  or  psy- 
chological of  the  effort  involved.  And  there  is 
nothing  whatever  in  it  which  proportions  to  it 
social  justice.  It  is  the  war  of  each  against  all. 
Its  only  mitigation  is  that  it  is  carried  on  under 
the  set  of  rules  represented  by  the  state  and 
the  law. 

The  tendencies  involved  may  be  best  illus- 
trated by  taking  one  or  two  extreme  or  exag- 
gerated examples,  not  meant  as  facts  but  only 


of  Social  Justice  81 

to  make  clear  the  nature  of  social  and  industrial 
forces  among  which  we  live. 

What,  for  example,  will  be  the  absolute 
maximum  to  which  wages  in  general  could  be 
forced?  Conceivably  and  in  the  purest  and 
thinnest  of  theory,  they  could  include  the  whole 
product  of  the  labor  of  society  with  just  such 
a  small  fraction  left  over  for  the  employers, 
the  owners  of  capital  and  the  owners  of  land 
to  induce  them  to  continue  acting  as  part  of 
the  machine.  That  is  to  say,  if  all  the  labor- 
ers all  over  the  world,  to  the  last  one,  were 
united  under  a  single  control  they  could  force 
the  other  economic  classes  of  society  to  some- 
thing approaching  a  starvation  living.  In  prac- 
tice this  is  nonsense.  In  theory  it  is  an  excel- 
lent starting  point  for  thought. 

And  how  short  could  the  hours  of  the  uni- 
versal united  workers  be  made?  As  short  as 
ever  they  liked :  An  hour  a  day :  ten  minutes, 
anything  they  like;  but  of  course  with  the  pro- 
viso that  the  shorter  the  hours  the  less  the  to- 
tal of  things  produced  to  be  divided.  It  is  true 
that  up  to  a  certain  point  shortening  the  hours 


82  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

of  labor  actually  increases  the  total  product. 
A  ten-hour  day,  speaking  in  general  terms  and 
leaving  out  individual  exceptions,  is  probably 
more  productive  than  a  day  of  twelve.  It  may 
very  well  be  that  an  eight-hour  day  will  prove, 
presently  if  not  immediately,  to  be  more  pro- 
ductive than  one  of  ten.  But  somewhere  the 
limit  is  reached  and  gross  production  falls.  The 
supply  of  things  in  general  gets  shorter.  But 
note  that  this  itself  would  not  matter  much,  if 
somehow  and  in  some  way  not  yet  found,  the 
shortening  of  the  production  of  goods  cut  out 
the  luxuries  and  superfluities  first.  Mankind 
at  large  might  well  trade  leisure  for  luxuries. 
The  shortening  of  hours  with  the  correspond- 
ing changes  in  the  direction  of  production  is 
really  the  central  problem  in  social  reform. 
I  propose  to  return  to  it  in  the  concluding 
chapter  of  these  papers,  but  for  the  present 
it  is  only  noted  in  connection  with  the  general 
scheme  of  industrial  relations. 

Now  let  us  ask  to  what  extent  any  particular 
section  or  part  of  industrial  society  can  suc- 
ceed in  forcing  up  wages  or  prices  as  against 


of  Social  Justice  83 

the  others.  In  pure  theory  they  may  do  this 
almost  to  any  extent,  provided  that  the  thing 
concerned  is  a  necessity  and  is  without  a  sub- 
stitute and  provided  that  their' organization  is 
complete  and  unbreakable.  If  all  the  people 
concerned  in  producing  coal,  masters  and  men, 
owners  of  mines  and  operators  of  machinery, 
could  stand  out  for  their  price,  there  is  no 
limit,  short  of  purting  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
on  starvation  rations,  to  what  they  might  get. 
In  practice  and  in  reality  a  thousand  things 
intervene — the  impossibility  of  such  complete 
unity,  the  organization  of  the  other  parties,  the 
existing  of  national  divisions  among  industrial 
society,  sentiment,  decency,  fear.  The  propo- 
sition is  only  "pure  theory."  But  its  use  as 
such  is  to  dispose  of  any  such  idea  as  that  there 
is  a  natural  price  of  coal  or  of  anything  else. 
The  above  is  true  of  any  article  of  necessity. 
It  is  true  though  in  a  less  degree  of  things  of 
luxury.  If  all  the  makers  of  instruments  of 
music,  masters  and  men,  capitalists  and  work- 
ers, were  banded  together  in  a  tight  and  un- 
breakable union,  then  the  other  economic 


84  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

classes  must  either  face  the  horrors  of  a  world 
without  pianolas  and  trombones,  or  hand  over 
the  price  demanded.  And  what  is  true  of  coal 
and  music  is  true  all  through  the  whole  mech- 
anism of  industry. 

Or  take  the  supreme  case  of  the  owners  of 
land.  If  all  of  them  acted  together,  with  their 
legal  rights  added  into  one,  they  could  order 
the  rest  of  the  world  either  to  get  off  it  or  to 
work  at  starvation  wages. 

Industrial  society  is  therefore  mobile,  elastic, 
standing  at  any  moment  in  a  temporary  and 
unstable  equilibrium.  But  at  any  particular 
moment  the  possibility  of  a  huge  and  catastro- 
phic shift  such  as  those  described  is  out  of  the 
question  except  at  the  price  of  a  general  col- 
lapse. Even  a  minor  dislocation  breaks  down 
a  certain  part  of  the  machinery  of  society. 
Particular  groups  of  workers  ?r;e  thrown  out 
of  place.  There  is  no  other  place  where  they 
can  fit  in,  or  at  any  rate  not  immediately.  The 
machine  labors  heavily.  Ominous  mutterings 
are  heard.  The  legal  framework  of  the  State 
and  of  obedience  to  the  law  in  which  indus- 


of  Social  Justice  85 

trial  society  is  set  threatens  to  break  asunder. 
The  attempt  at  social  change  threatens  a  social 
revolution  in  which  the  whole  elaborate  mech- 
anism would  burst  into  fragments. 

In  any  social  movement,  then,  change  and 
alteration  in  a  new  direction  must  be  balanced 
against  the  demands  of  social  stability.  Some 
things  are  possible  and  some  are  not;  some  are 
impossible  to-day,  and  possible  or  easy  to- 
morrow. Others  are  forever  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. 

But  this  much  at  least  ought  to  appear  clear 
if  the  line  of  argument  indicated  above  is  ac- 
cepted, namely,  that  there  is  no  great  hope  for 
universal  betterment  of  society  by  the  mere  ad- 
vance of  technical  industrial  progress  and  by 
the  unaided  play  of  the  motive  of  every  man 
for  himself. 

The  enormo-  i  increase  in  the  productivity 
of  industrial  effort  would  never  of  itself  have 
elevated  by  one  inch  the  lot  of  the  working 
class.  The  rise  of  wages  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury and  the  shortening  of  hours  that  went 
with  it  was  due  neither  to  the  advance  in  me- 


86  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

chanical  power  nor  to  the  advance  in  diligence 
and  industriousness,  nor  to  the  advance,  if 
there  was  any,  in  general  kindliness.  It  was 
due  to  the  organization  of  labor.  Mechanical 
progress  makes  higher  wages  possible.  It  does 
not,  of  itself,  advance  them  by  a  single  farthing. 
Labor  saving  machinery  does  not  of  itself  save 
the  working  world  a  single  hour  of  toil :  it  only 
shifts  it  from  one  task  to  another. 

Against  a  system  of  unrestrained  individual- 
ism, energy,  industriousness  and  honesty  might 
shatter  itself  in  vain.  The  thing  is  merely  a 
race  in  which  only  one  can  be  first  no  matter 
how  great  the  speed  of  all;  a  struggle  in  which 
one,  and  not  all,  can  stand  upon  the  shoulders 
of  the  others.  It  is  the  restriction  of  individ- 
ualism by  the  force  of  organization  and  by  leg- 
islation that  has  brought  to  the  world  what- 
ever social  advance  has  been  achieved  by  the 
great  mass  of  the  people. 

The  present  moment  is  in  a  sense  the  wrong 
time  to  say  this.  We  no  longer  live  in  an  age 
when  down-trodden  laborers  meet  by  candle- 
light with  the  ban  of  the  law  upon  their  meet- 


of  Social  Justice  87 

ing.  These  are  the  days  when  "labor"  is  tri- 
umphant, and  when  it  ever  threatens  in  the 
overweening  strength  of  its  own  power  to 
break  industrial  society  in  pieces  in  the  fierce 
attempt  to  do  in  a  day  what  can  only  be  done 
in  a  generation.  But  truth  is  truth.  And  any 
one  who  writes  of  the  history  of  the  progress 
of  industrial  society  owes  it  to  the  truth  to 
acknowledge  the  vast  social  achievement  of  or- 
ganized labor  in  the  past. 

And  what  of  the  future? 

By  what  means  and  in  what  stages  can  social 
progress  be  further  accelerated?  This  I  pro- 
pose to  treat  in  the  succeeding  chapters,  dealing 
first  with  the  proposals  of  the  socialists  and  the 
revolutionaries,  and  finally  with  the  prospect 
for  a  sane,  orderly  and  continuous  social  re- 
form. 


V. — The  Land  of  Dreams:  The  Utopia  of 
the  Socialist 

WHO  is  there  that  has  not  turned 
at  times  from  the  fever  and  fret 
of  the  world  we  live  in,  from  the 
spectacle  of  its  wasted  energy,  its 
Wild  frenzy  of  work  and  its  bitter  inequality, 
to  the  land  of  dreams,  to  the  pictured  vision 
of  the  world  as  it  might  be? 

Such  a  vision  has  haunted  in  all  ages  the 
brooding  mind  of  mankind;  and  every  age  has 
fashioned  for  itself  the  image  of  a  "some- 
where" or  "nowhere" — a  Utopia  in  which 
there  should  be  equality  and  justice  for  all. 
The  vision  itself  is  an  outcome  of  that  divine 
discontent  which  raises  man  above  his  envi- 
ronment. 

Every  age  has  had  its  socialism,  its  commu- 
nism, its  dream  of  bread  and  work  for  all. 


The  Unsolved  Riddle  89 

But  the  dream  has  varied  always  in  the  like- 
ness of  the  thought  of  the  time.  In  earlier 
days  the  dream  was  not  one  of  social  wealth. 
It  was  rather  a  vision  of  the  abnegation  of 
riches,  of  humble  possessions  shared  in  common 
after  the  manner  of  the  unrealized  ideal  of  the 
Christian  faith.  It  remained  for  the  age  of 
machinery  and  power  to  bring  forth  another 
and  a  vastly  more  potent  socialism.  This  was 
no  longer  a  plan  whereby  all  might  be  poor 
together,  but  a  proposal  that  all  should  be  rich 
together.  The  collectivist  state  advocated  by 
the  socialist  of  to-day  has  scarcely  anything  in 
common  with  the  communism  of  the  middle 
ages. 

Modern  socialism  is  the  direct  outcome  of 
the  age  of  machine  production.  It  takes  its 
first  inspiration  from  glaring  contrasts  between 
riches  and  poverty  presented  by  the  modern 
era,  from  the  strange  paradox  that  has  been 
described  above  between  human  power  and  its 
failure  to  satisfy  human  want.  The  nineteenth 
century  brought  with  it  the  factory  and  the 
factory  slavery  of  the  Lancashire  children,  the 


90  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

modern  city  and  city  slum,  the  plutocracy  and 
the  proletariat,  and  all  the  strange  discrepancy 
between  wealth  and  want  that  has  disfigured 
the  material  progress  of  the  last  hundred  years. 
The  rising  splendor  of  capitalism  concealed 
from  the  dazzled  eye  the  melancholy  spectacle 
of  the  new  industrial  poverty  that  lay  in  the 
shadow  behind  it. 

The  years  that  followed  the  close  of  the 
Napoleonic  wars  in  1815  were  in  many  senses 
years  of  unexampled  misery.  The  accumu- 
lated burden  of  the  war  lay  heavy  upon  Europe. 
The  rise  of  the  new  machine  power  had  dis- 
locaced  the  older  system.  A  multitude  of  land- 
less men  clamored  for  bread  and  work.  Pau- 
perism spread  like  a  plague.  Each  new  inven- 
tion threw  thousands  of  hand-workers  out  of 
employment.  The  law  still  branded  as  con- 
spiracy any  united  attempt  of  workingmen  to 
raise  wages  or  to  shorten  the  hours  of  work. 
At  the  very  moment  when  the  coming  of  steam 
power  and  the  use  of  modern  machinery  were 
piling  up  industrial  fortunes  undreamed  of  be- 
fore, destitution,  pauperism  and  unemployment 


of  Social  Justice  k91 

seemed  more  widespread  and  more  ominous 
than  ever.  In  this  rank  atmosphere  germi- 
nated modern  socialism.  The  writings  of 
Marx  and  Engels  and  Louis  Blanc  were  in- 
spired by  what  they  saw  about  them. 

From  its  very  cradle  socialism  showed  the 
double  aspect  which  has  distinguished  it  ever 
since.  To  the  minds  of  some  it  was  the  faith 
of  the  insurrectionist,  something  to  be  achieved 
by  force;  "bourgeois"  society  must  be  over- 
thrown by  force  of  arms;  if  open  and  fair  fight- 
ing was  not  possible  against  such  great  odds, 
it  must  be  blown  skyhigh  with  gunpowder. 
Dynamite,  by  the  good  fortune  of  invention, 
came  to  the  revolutionary  at  the  very  moment 
when  it  was  most  wanted.  To  the  men  of  vio- 
lence, socialism  was  the  twin  brother  of  an- 
archism, born  at  the  same  time,  advocating  the 
same  means  and  differing  only  as  to  the  final 
end. 

But  to  others,  socialism  was  from  the  begin- 
ning, as  it  is  to-day,  a  creed  of  peace.  It  advo- 
cated the  betterment  of  society  not  by  violence 
but  by  persuasion,  by  peaceful  argument  and 


92  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

the  recognized  rule  of  the  majority.  It  is  true 
that  the  earlier  socialists  almost  to  a  man  in- 
cluded, in  the  first  passion  of  their  denunciation, 
things  not  necessarily  within  the  compass  of 
purely  economic  reform.  As  children  of  mis- 
ery they  cried  out  against  all  human  institu- 
tions. The  bond  of  marriage  seemed  an  ac- 
cursed thing,  the  mere  slavery  of  women.  The 
family — the  one  institution  in  which  the  better 
side  of  human  nature  shines  with  an  undimmed 
light — was  to  them  but  an  engine  of  class  op- 
pression; the  Christian  churches  merely  the  par- 
asitic servants  of  the  tyrannous  power  of  a 
plutocratic  state.  The  whole  history  of  human 
civilization  was  denounced  as  an  unredeemed 
record  of  the  spoliation  of  the  weak  by  the 
strong.  Even  the  domain  of  the  philosopher 
was  needlessly  invaded  and  all  forms  of  spec- 
ulative belief  were  rudely  thrown  aside  in  favor 
of  a  wooden  materialism  as  dogmatic  as  any 
of  the  creeds  or  theories  which  it  proposed  to 
replace. 

Thus  seen,  socialism  appeared  as  the  very 
antithesis  of  law  and  order,  of  love  and  chas- 


of  Social  Justice  93 

tity,  and  of  religion  itself.  It  was  a  tainted 
creed.  There  was  blood  upon  its  hands  and 
bloody  menace  in  its  thoughts.  It  was  a  thing 
to  be  stamped  out,  to  be  torn  up  by  the  roots. 
The  very  soil  in  which  it  grew  must  be  burned 
out  with  the  flame  of  avenging  justice. 

Such  it  still  appears  to  many  people  to-day. 
The  unspeakable  savagery  of  bolshevism  has 
made  good  the  wildest  threats  of  the  partisans 
of  violence  and  fulfilled  the  sternest  warnings 
of  the  conservative.  To-day  more  than  ever 
socialism  is  in  danger  of  becoming  a  prescribed 
creed,  its  very  name  under  the  ban  of  the  law, 
its  literature  burned  by  the  hangman  and  a  gag 
placed  upon  its  mouth. 

But  this  is  neither  right  nor  wise.  Socialism, 
like  every  other  impassioned  human  effort,  will 
flourish  best  under  martyrdom.  It  will  lan- 
guish and  perish  in  the  dry  sunlight  of  open 
discussion. 

For  it  must  always  be  remembered  in  fair- 
ness that  the  creed  of  violence  has  no  necessary 
connection  with  socialism.  In  its  essential  na- 
ture socialism  is  nothing  but  a  proposal  for  cer- 


94  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

tain  kinds  of  economic  reform.  A  man  has 
just  as  much  right  to  declare  himself  a  socialist 
as  he  has  to  call  himself  a  Seventh  Day  Advent- 
ist  or  a  Prohibitionist,  or  a  Perpetual  Motion- 
ist.  It  is,  or  should  be,  open  to  him  to  convert 
others  to  his  way  of  thinking.  It  is  only  time 
to  restrain  him  when  he  proposes  to  convert 
others  by  means  of  a  shotgun  or  by  dynamite, 
and  by  forcible  interference  with  their  own 
rights.  When  he  does  this  he  ceases  to  be  a 
socialist  pure  and  simple  and  becomes  a  crim- 
inal as  well.  The  law  can  deal  with  him  as 
such. 

But  with  socialism  itself  the  law,  in  a  free 
country,  should  have  no  kind  of  quarrel.  For 
in  the  whole  program  of  peaceful  socialism 
there  is  nothing  wrong  at  all  except  one  thing. 
Apart  from  this  it  is  a  high  and  ennobling  ideal 
truly  fitted  for  a  community  of  saints.  And 
the  one  thing  that  is  wrong  with  socialism  is 
that  it  won't  work.  That  is  all.  It  is,  as  it 
were,  a  beautiful  machine  of  which  the  wheels, 
dependent  upon  some  unknown  and  uninvented 
motive  power,  refuse  to  turn.  The  unknown 


of  Social  Justice  95 

motive  force  in  this  case  means  a  power  of 
altruism,  of  unselfishness,  of  willingness  to 
labor  for  the  good  of  others,  such  as  the  human 
race  has  never  known,  nor  is  ever  likely  to 
know.  But  the  worst  public  policy  to  pursue 
in  reference  to  such  a  machine  is  to  lock  it  up, 
to  prohibit  all  examination  of  it  and  to  allow 
it  to  become  a  hidden  mystery,  the  whispered 
hope  of  its  martyred  advocates.  Better  far  to 
stand  it  out  into  the  open  daylight,  to  let  all 
who  will  inspect  it,  and  to  prove  even  to  the 
simplest  that  such  a  contrivance  once  and  for 
all  and  for  ever  cannot  be  made  to  run. 

Let  us  turn  to  examine  the  machine. 

We  may  omit  here  all  discussion  of  the  his- 
torical progress  of  socialism  and  the  stages 
whereby  it  changed  from  the  creed  of  a  few 
theorists  and  revolutionists  to  being  the  ac- 
cepted platform  of  great  political  parties, 
counting  its  adherents  by  the  million.  All  of 
this  belongs  elsewhere.  It  suffices  here  to  note 
that  in  the  process  of  its  rise  it  has  chafed  away 
much  of  the  superfluous  growth  that  clung  to 
it  and  has  become  a  purely  economic  doctrine. 


96  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

There  is  no  longer  any  need  to  discuss  in  con- 
nection with  it  the  justification  of  marriage  and 
the  family,  and  the  Tightness  or  wrongness  of 
Christianity:  no  need  to  decide  whether  the 
materialistic  theory  of  history  is  true  or  false, 
since  nine  socialists  out  of  ten  to-day  have  for- 
gotten, or  have  never  heard,  what  the  mate- 

i       -- 

rialistic  theory  of  history  is:  no  need  to  exam- 
ine whether  human  history  is,  or  is  not,  a  mere 
record  of  class  exploitation,  since  the  contro- 
versy has  long  shifted  to  other  grounds.  The 
essential  thing  to-day  is  not  the  past,  but  the 
future.  The  question  is,  what  does  the  social- 
ist have  to  say  about  the  conditions  under  which 
we  live  and  the  means  that  he  advocates  for 
the  betterment  of  them? 

His  case  stands  thus.  He  begins  his  discus- 
sion with  an  indictment  of  the  manifold  weak- 
nesses and  the  obvious  injustices  of  the  system 
under  which  we  live.  And  in  this  the  socialist 
is  very  largely  right.  He  shows  that  under 
free  individual  competition  there  is  a  perpetual 
waste  of  energy.  Competing  rivals  cover  the 
same  field.  Even  the  simplest  services  are  per- 


of  Social  Justice  97 

formed  with  an  almost  ludicrous  waste  of  en- 
ergy. In  every  modern  city  the  milk  supply 
is  distributed  by  erratic  milkmen  who  skip  from 
door  to  door  and  from  street  to  street,  covering 
the  same  ground,  each  leaving  his  cans  of  milk 
here  and  there  in  a  sporadic  fashion  as  hap- 
hazard as  a  bee  among  the  flowers.  Contrast, 
says  the  socialist,  the  wasted  labors  of  the  milk- 
man with  the  orderly  and  systematic  perform- 
ance of  the  postman,  himself  a  little  fragment 
of  socialism.  And  the  milkman,  they  tell  us, 
is  typical  of  modern  industrial  society.  Com- 
peting railways  run  trains  on  parallel  tracks, 
with  empty  cars  that  might  be  filled  and  with 
vast  executive  organizations  which  do  ten  times 
over  the  work  that  might  be  done  by  one. 
Competing  stores  needlessly  occupy  the  time  of 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  employees  in  a  mix- 
ture of  idleness  and  industry.  An  inconceiv- 
able quantity  of  human  effort  is  spent  on  adver- 
tising, mere  shouting  and  display,  as  unproduc- 
tive in  the  social  sense  as  the  beating  of  a  drum. 
Competition  breaks  into  a  dozen  inefficient 
parts  the  process  that  might  conceivably  be 


98  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

carried  out,  with  an  infinite  saving  of  effort, 
by  a  single  guiding  hand. 

The  socialist  looking  thus  at  the  world  we 
live  in  sees  in  it  nothing  but  waste  and  selfish- 
ness and  inefficiency.  He  looks  so  long  that  a 
mist  comes  before  his  eyes.  He  loses  sight  of 
the  supreme  fact  that  after  all,  in  its  own  poor, 
clumsy  fashion,  the  machine  does  work.  He 
loses  sight  of  the  possibility  of  our  falling  into 
social  chaos.  He  sees  no  longer  the  brink  of 
the  abyss  beside  which  the  path  of  progress 
picks  its  painful  way.  He  leaps  with  a  shout 
of  exultation  over  the  cliff. 

And  he  lands,  at  least  in  imagination,  in  his 
ideal  state,  his  Utopia.  Here  the  noise  and 
clamor  of  competitive  industry  is  stilled.  We 
look  about  us  at  a  peaceful  landscape  where 
men  and  women  brightly  clothed  and  abun- 
dantly fed  and  warmed,  sing  at  their  easy  task. 
There  is  enough  for  all  and  more  than  enough. 
Poverty  has  vanished.  Want  is  unknown. 
The  children  play  among  the  flowers.  The 
youths  and  maidens  are  at  school.  There  are 
no  figures  here  bent  with  premature  toil,  no 


of  Social  Justice  99 

> 

faces  dulled  and  furrowed  with  a  life  of  hard- 
ship. The  light  of  education  and  culture  has 
shone  full  on  every  face  and  illuminated  it  into 
all  that  it  might  be.  The  cheerful  hours  of 
easy  labor  vary  but  do  not  destroy  the  pursuit 
of  pleasure  and  of  recreation.  Youth  in  such 
a  Utopia  is  a  very  springtime  of  hope:  adult 
life  a  busy  and  cheery  activity:  and  age  itself, 
watching  from  its  shady  bench  beneath  a 
spreading  tree  the  labors  of  its  children,  is  but: 
a  gentle  retrospect  from  which  material  care 
has  passed  away. 

It  is  a  picture  beautiful  as  the  opalescent  col- 
ors of  a  soap  bubble.  It  is  the  vision  of  a 
garden  of  Eden  from  which  the  demon  has 
been  banished.  And  the  Demon  in  question 
is  the  Private  Ownership  of  the  Means  of  Pro- 
duction. His  name  is  less  romantic  than  those 
of  the  wonted  demons  of  legend  and  folklore. 
But  it  is  at  least  suitable  for  the  matter-of-fact 
age  of  machinery  which  he  is  supposed  to 
haunt  and  on  which  he  casts  his  evil  spell.  Let 
him  be  once  exorcised  and  the  ills  of  humanity 
are  gone.  And  the  exorcism,  it  appears,  is  of 


100  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

the  simplest.  Let  this  demon  once  feel  the  con- 
tact of  state  ownership  of  the  means  of  produc- 
tion and  his  baneful  influence  will  vanish  into 
thin  air  as  his  mediaeval  predecessors  did  at  the 
touch  of  a  thimbleful  of  holy  water. 

This,  then,  is  the  socialist's  program. 
Let  "the  state"  take  over  all  the  means  of  pro- 
duction— all  the  farms,  the  mines,  the  factories, 
the  workshops,  the  ships,  the  railroads.  Let  it 
direct  the  workers  towards  their  task  in  accord- 
ance with  the  needs  of  society.  Let  each  labor 
for  all  in  the  measure  of  his  strength  and  talent. 
Let  each  receive  from  all  in  the  measure  of 
his  proper  needs.  No  work  is  to  be  wasted: 
nothing  is  to  be  done  twice  that  need  only  be 
done  once.  All  must  work  and  none  must  be 
idle :  but  the  amount  of  work  needed  under 
these  conditions  will  be  so  small,  the  hours  so 
short,  and  the  effort  so  slight,  that  work  itself 
will  no  longer  be  the  grinding  monotonous  toil 
that  we  know  to-day,  but  a  congenial  activity 
pleasant  in  itself. 

A  thousand  times  this  picture  has  been  pre- 
sented. The  visionary  with  uplifted  eyes,  his 


of  Social  Justice  101 

gaze  bent  on  the  bright  colors  of  the  floating 
bubble,  has  voiced  it  from  a  thousand  plat- 
forms. The  earnest  youth  grinding  at  the  aca- 
demic mill  has  dreamed  it  in  the  pauses  of  his 
studious  labor.  The  impassioned  pedant  has 
written  it  in  heavy  prose  smothering  its  bright- 
ness in  the  dull  web  of  his  own  thought.  The 
brilliant  imaginative  mind  has  woven  it  into 
romance,  making  its  colors  brighter  still  with 
the  sunlight  of  inspired  phantasy. 

But  never,  I  think,  has  the  picture  of  social- 
ism at  work  been  so  ably  and  so  dexterously 
presented  as  in  a  book  that  begins  to  be  for- 
gotten now,  but  which  some  thirty  years  ago 
took  the  continent  by  storm.  This  was  the  vol- 
ume in  which  Mr.  Edward  Bellamy  "looked 
backward"  from  his  supposed  point  of  vantage 
in  the  year  2000  A.  D.  and  saw  us  as  we  are 
and  as  we  shall  be.  No  two  plans  of  a  social- 
ist state  are  ever  quite  alike.  But  the  scheme 
of  society  outlined  in  "Looking  Backward"  may 
be  examined  as  the  most  attractive  and  the  most 
consistent  outline  of  a  socialist  state  that  has, 
within  the  knowledge  of  the  present  writer,  ever 


102  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

been  put  forward.  It  is  worth  while,  in  the 
succeeding  chapter  to  examine  it  in  detail.  No 
better  starting  point  for  the  criticism  of  collec- 
tivist  theories  can  be  found  than  in  a  view  of 
the  basis  on  which  is  supposed  to  rest  the  hal- 
cyon life  of  Mr.  Bellamy's  charming  common- 
wealth. 


VI. — How  Mr.  Bellamy  Looked  Backward 

THE  reading  public  is  as  wayward  and 
as  fickle  as  a  bee  among  the  flowers. 
It  will  not  long  pause  anywhere,  and 
it  easily  leaves  each  blossom  for  a  bet- 
ter.    But  like  the  bee,  while  impelled  by  an 
instinct  that  makes  it  search  for  sugar,  it  sucks 
in  therewith  its  solid  sustenance. 

I  am  not  quite  certain  that  the  bee  does  ex- 
actly do  this;  but  it  is  just  the  kind  of  thing 
that  the  bee  is  likely  to  do.  And  in  any  case 
it  is  precisely  the  thing  which  the  reading  pub- 
lic does.  It  will  not  read  unless  it  is  tempted 
by  the  sugary  sweetness  of  the  romantic  inter- 
est. It  must  have  its  hero  and  its  heroine  and 
its  course  of  love  that  never  will  run  smooth. 
For  information  the  reader  cares  nothing.  If 
he  absorbs  it,  it  must  be  by  accident,  and  un- 
awares. He  passes  over  the  heavy  tomes  filled 
103 


104  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

with  valuable  fact,  and  settles  like  the  random 
bee  upon  the  bright  flowers  of  contemporary 
romance. 

Hence  if  the  reader  is  to  be  ensnared  into 
absorbing  something  useful,  it  must  be  hidden 
somehow  among  the  flowers.  A  treatise  on 
religion  must  be  disguised  as  a  love  story  in 
which  a  young  clergyman,  sworn  into  holy 
orders,  falls  in  love  with  an  actress.  The 
facts  of  history  are  imparted  by  a  love  story 
centering  around  the  adventures  of  a  hitherto 
unknown  son  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth.  And 
a  discussion  of  the  relations  of  labor  and  cap- 
ital takes  the  form  of  a  romance  in  which  the 
daughter  of  a  multi-millionaire  steps  volunta- 
rily out  of  her  Fifth  Avenue  home  to  work  in 
a  steam  laundry. 

Such  is  the  recognized  method  by  which  the 
great  unthinking  public  is  taught  to  think. 
Slavery  was  not  fully  known  till  Mrs.  Stowe 
wrote  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  and  the  slow 
tyranny  of  the  law's  delay  was  taught  to  the 
world  for  ever  in  the  pages  of  "Bleak  House." 

So  it  has  been  with  socialism.     No  single 


of  Social  Justice  105 

influence  ever  brought  its  ideas  and  its  propa- 
ganda so  forcibly  and  clearly  before  the  public 
mind  as  Mr.  Edward  Bellamy's  brilliant  novel, 
"Looking  Backward,"  published  some  thirty 
years  ago.  The  task  was  arduous.  Social  and 
economic  theory  is  heavy  to  the  verge  of  being 
indigestible.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  gay 
book  on  political  economy  for  reading  in  a 
hammock.  Yet  Mr.  Bellamy  succeeded.  His 
book  is  in  cold  reality  nothing  but  a  series  of 
conversations  explaining  how  a  socialist  com- 
monwealth is  supposed  to  work.  Yet  he  con- 
trives to  bring  into  it  a  hero  and  a  heroine, 
and  somehow  the  warm  beating  of  their  hearts 
and  the  stolen  glances  in  their  eyes  breathe  into 
the  dry  dust  of  economic  argument  the  breath 
of  life.  Nor  was  ever  a  better  presentation 
made  of  the  essential  program  of  socialism. 

It  is  worth  while  then,  as  was  said  in  the 
preceding  chapter,  to  consider  Mr.  Bellamy's 
commonwealth  as  the  most  typical  and  the  most 
carefully  constructed  of  all  the  ready-made 
socialisms  that  have  been  put  forward. 

The  mere  machinery  of  the  story  can  be 


106  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

lightly  passed  over.  It  is  intended  simply  as 
the  sugar  that  lures  the  random  bee.  The 
hero,  living  in  Boston  in  1887,  is  supposed  to 
fall  asleep  in  a  deep,  underground  chamber 
which  he  has  made  for  himself  as  a  remedy 
against  a  harassing  insomnia.  Unknown  to 
the  sleeper  the  house  above  his  retreat  is 
burned  down.  He  remains  in  a  trance  for  a 
hundred  and  thirteen  years  and  awakes  to  find 
himself  in  the  Boston  of  the  year  2000  A.  D. 
Kind  hands  remove  him  from  his  sepulcher. 
He  is  revived.  He  finds  himself  under  the 
care  of  a  certain  learned  and  genial  Dr.  Leete, 
whose  house  stands  on  the  very  site  where  once 
the  sleeper  lived.  The  beautiful  daughter  of 
Dr.  Leete  looks  upon  the  newcomer  from  the 
lost  world  with  eyes  in  which,  to  the  mind  of 
the  sagacious  reader,  love  is  seen  at  once  to 
dawn.  In  reality  she  is  the  great-granddaughter 
of  the  fiancee  whom  the  sleeper  was  to  have 
married  in  his  former  life;  thus  a  faint  sugges- 
tion of  the  transmigration  of  souls  illuminates 
their  intercourse.  Beyond  that  there  is  no 
story  and  at  the  end  of  the  book  the  sleeper, 


of  Social  Justice  107 

in  another  dream,  is  conveniently  transported 
back  to  1887  which  he  can  now  contrast,  in 
horror,  with  the  ideal  world  of  2000  A.  D. 

And  what  was  this  world?  The  sleeper's 
first  vision  of  it  was  given  him  by  Dr.  Leete, 
who  took  him  to  the  house  top  and  let  him  see 
the  Boston  of  the  future.  Wide  avenues  re- 
place the  crowded,  noisy  streets.  There  are 
no  shops  but  only  here  and  there  among  the 
trees  great  marble  buildings,  the  emporiums 
from  which  the  goods  are  delivered  to  the  pur- 
ple public. 

And  the  goods  are  delivered  indeed! 
Dr.  Leete  explains  it  all  with  intervals  of  grate- 
ful cigar  smoking  and  of  music  and  prome- 
nades with  the  beautiful  Edith,  and  meals  in 
wonderful  communistic  restaurants  with  roman- 
tic waiters,  who  feel  themselves,  mirabile  dictu, 
quite  independent. 

And  this  is  how  the  commonwealth  operates. 
Everybody  works  or  at  least  works  until  the 
age  of  forty,  so  that  it  may  be  truly  said  in  these 
halcyon  days  everybody  works  but  father.  But 
the  work  of  life  does  not  begin  till  education 


108  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

ends  at  the  age  of  twenty-one.     After  that  all 
the  young  men  and  women  pass  for  three  years 
into  the  general  "Industrial  Army,"  much  as 
the  young  men  used  to  pass  into  the  ranks  of 
conscription.     Afterwards  each  person  may  se- 
lect any  trade  that  he  likes.     But  the  hours  are 
made  longer  or  shorter  according  to  whether 
too  many  or  too  few  young  people  apply  to 
come  in.     A  gardener  works  for  more  hours 
than    a    scavenger.     Yet    all    occupations    are 
equally  honorable.     The  wages  of  all  the  peo- 
ple are  equal;  or  rather  there  are  no  wages  at 
all,  as  the  workers  merely  receive  cards,  which 
entitle  them  to  goods  of  such  and  such  a  quan- 
tity at  any  of  the  emporiums:     The  cards  are 
punched  out  as  the  goods  are  used.     The  goods 
are  all  valued  according  to  the  amount  of  time 
used  in  their  making  and  each  citizen  draws 
out  the  same  total  amount.     But  he  may  take 
it  out  in  installments  just  as  he  likes,  drawing 
many  things  one  month  and  few  the  next.     He 
may  even  get  goods  in  advance  if  he  has  any 
special  need.     He  may,  within  a  certain  time 
limit,  save  up  his  cards,  but  it  must  be  remem- 


of  Social  Justice  109 

bered  that  the  one  thing  which  no  card  can  buy 
and  which  no  citizens  can  own  is  the  "means 
of  production."  These  belong  collectively  to 
all.  Land,  mines,  machinery,  factories  and  the 
whole  mechanism  of  transport,  these  things  are 
public  property  managed  by  the  State.  Its 
workers  in  their  use  of  them  are  all  directed 
by  public  authority  as  to  what  they  shall  make 
and  when  they  shall  make  it,  and  how  much 
shall  be  made.  On  these  terms  all  share  alike; 
the  cripple  receives  as  much  as  the  giant;  the 
worker  of  exceptional  dexterity  and  energy  the 
same  as  his  slower  and  less  gifted  fellow. 

All  the  management,  the  control — and  let 
this  be  noted,  for  there  is  no  escape  from  it 
either  by  Mr.  Bellamy  or  by  anybody  else- 
is  exercised  by  boards  of  officials  elected  by  the 
people.  All  the  complex  organization  by 
which  production  goes  on  by  which  the  workers 
are  supervised  and  shifted  from  trade  to  trade, 
by  which  their  requests  for  a  change  of  work 
or  an  extension  of  credit  are  heard  and  judged 
— all  of  this  is  done  by  the  elected  "bosses." 
One  lays  stress  on  this  not  because  it  is  Mr. 


110  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

Bellamy's  plan,  but  because  it  is,  and  it  has  to 
be,  the  plan  of  anybody  who  constructs  a  social- 
ist commonwealth. 

Mr.  Bellamy  has  many  ingenious  arrange- 
ments to  meet  the  needs  of  people  who  want 
to  be  singers  or  actors  or  writers, — in  other 
words,  who  do  not  want  to  work.  They  may 
sing  or  act  as  much  as  they  like,  provided  that 
enough  other  people  will  hand  over  enough  of 
their  food  cards  to  keep  them  going.  But  if 
no  one  wants  to  hear  them  sing  or  see  them  act 
they  may  starve, — just  as  they  do  now.  Here 
the  author  harks  back  unconsciously  to  his  nine- 
teenth century  individualism;  he  need  not  have 
done  so;  other  socialist  writers  would  have  it 
that  one  of  the  everlasting  boards  would  "sit 
on"  every  aspiring  actor  or  author  before  he 
was  allowed  to  begin.  But  we  may  take  it 
cither  way.  It  is  not  the  major  point.  There 
is  no  need  to  discuss  the  question  of  how  to 
deal  with  the  artist  under  socialism.  If  the 
rest  of  it  were  all  right,  no  one  need  worry 
about  the  artist.  Perhaps  he  would  do  better 
without  being  remunerated  at  all.  It  is  doubt- 


of  Social  Justice  111 

ful  whether  the  huge  commercial  premium  that 
greets  success  to-day  does  good  or  harm.  But 
let  it  pass.  It  is  immaterial  to  the  present 
matter. 

One  comes  back  to  the  essential  question  of 
the  structure  of  the  commonwealth.  Can  such 
a  thing,  or  anything  conceived  in  its  likeness, 
possibly  work?  The  answer  is,  and  must  be, 
absolutely  and  emphatically  no. 

Let  anyone  conversant  with  modern  democ- 
racy as  it  is, — not  as  its  founders  dreamed  of 
it, — picture  to  himself  the  operation  of  a  sys- 
tem whereby  anything  and  everything  is  con- 
trolled by  elected  officials,  from  whom  there  is 
no  escape,  outside  of  whom  is  no  livelihood  and 
to  whom  all  men  must  bow!  Democracy,  let 
us  grant  it,  is  the  best  system  of  government 
as  yet  operative  in  this  world  of  sin.  Beside 
autocratic  kingship  it  shines  with  a  white  light; 
it  is  obviously  the  portal  of  the  future.  But 
we  know  it  now  too  well  to  idealize  its  merits. 

A  century  and  a  half  ago  when  the  world 
was  painfully  struggling  out  of  the  tyranny  of 
autocratic  kingship,  when  English  liberalism 


112  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

was  in  its  cradle,  when  Thomas  Jefferson  was 
composing  the  immortal  phrases  of  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence  and  unknown  patriots 
dreamed  of  freedom  in  France, — at  such  an 
epoch  it  was  but  natural  that  the  principle  of 
popular  election  should  be  idealized  as  the  sov- 
ereign remedy  for  the  political  evils  of  man- 
kind. It  was  natural  and  salutary  that  it 
should  be  so.  The  force  of  such  idealization 
helped  to  carry  forward  the  human  race  to  a 
new  milestone  on  the  path  of  progress. 

But  when  it  is  proposed  to  entrust  to  the 
method  of  elective  control  not  a  part  but  the 
whole  of  the  fortunes  of  humanity,  to  commit 
to  it  not  merely  the  form  of  government  and 
the  necessary  maintenance  of  law,  order  and 
public  safety,  but  the  whole  operation  of  the 
production  and  distribution  of  the  world's 
goods,  the  case  is  altered.  The  time  is  ripe 
then  for  retrospect  over  the  experience  of  the 
nineteenth  century  and  for  a  realization  of 
what  has  proved  in  that  experience  the  peculiar 
defects  of  elective  democracy. 

Mr.  Bellamy  pictures  his  elected  managers, 


of  Social  Justice  113 

— as  every  socialist  has  to  do, — as  a  sagacious 
and  paternal  group,  free  from  the  interest  of 
self  and  the  play  of  the  baser  passions  and  ani- 
mated only  by  the  thought  of  the  public  good. 
Gravely  they  deliberate;  wisely  and  justly  they 
decide.  Their  gray  heads — for  Bellamy  pre- 
fers them  old — are  bowed  in  quiet  confabula- 
tion over  the  nice  adjustment  of  the  national 
production,  over  the  petition  of  this  or  that 
citizen.  The  public  care  sits  heavily  on  their 
breast.  Their  own  peculiar  fortune  they  have 
lightly  passed  by.  They  do  not  favor  their 
relations  or  their  friends.  They  do  not  count 
their  hours  of  toil.  They  do  not  enumerate 
their  gain.  They  work,  in  short,  as  work  the 
angels. 

Now  let  me  ask  in  the  name  of  sanity  where 
are  such  officials  to  be  found?  Here  and 
there,  perhaps,  one  sees  in  the  world  of  to-day 
in  the  stern  virtue  of  an  honorable  public  ser- 
vant some  approximation  to  such  a  civic  ideal. 
But  how  much,  too,  has  been  seen  of  the  rule 
of  "cliques"  and  "interests"  and  "bosses;"  of 
the  election  of  genial  incompetents  popular  as 


114  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

spendthrifts;  of  crooked  partisans  warm  to 
their  friends  and  bitter  to  their  enemies;  of 
administration  by  a  party  for  a  party;  and  of 
the  insidious  poison  of  commercial  greed  defil- 
ing the  wells  of  public  honesty.  The  unending 
conflict  between  business  and  politics,  between 
the  private  gain  and  the  public  good,  has  been 
for  two  generations  the  despair  of  modern  de- 
mocracy. It  turns  this  way  and  that  in  its  vain 
effort  to  escape  corruption.  It  puts  its  faith 
now  in  representative  legislatures,  and  now  in 
appointed  boards  and  commissions;  it  appeals 
to  the  vote  of  the  whole  people  or  it  places  an 
almost  autocratic  power  and  a  supreme  respon- 
sibility in  the  hands  of  a  single  man.  And 
nowhere  has  the  escape  been  found.  The  mel- 
ancholy lesson  is  being  learned  that  the  path  of 
human  progress  is  arduous  and  its  forward 
movement  slow  and  that  no  mere  form  of  gov- 
ernment can  aid  unless  it  is  inspired  by  a  higher 
public  spirit  of  the  individual  citizen  than  we 
have  yet  managed  to  achieve. 

And  of  the  world  of  to-day,  be  it  remem- 
bered, elective  democratic  control  covers  only 


of  Social  Justice  115 

a  part  of  the  field.  Under  socialism  it  covers 
it  all.  To-day  in  our  haphazard  world  a  man 
is  his  own  master;  often  indeed  the  mastership 
is  but  a  pitiful  thing,  little  more  than  being 
master  of  his  own  failure  and  starvation;  often 
indeed  the  dead  weight  of  circumstance,  the  ac- 
cident of  birth,  the  want  of  education,  may  so 
press  him  down  that  his  freedom  is  only  a 
mockery.  Let  us  grant  all  that.  But  under 
socialism  freedom  is  gone.  There  is  nothing 
but  the  rule  of  the  elected  boss.  The  worker 
is  commanded  to  his  task  and  obey  he  must. 
If  he  will  not,  there  is,  there  can  only  be,  the 
prison  and  the  scourge,  or  to  be  cast  out  in  the 
wilderness  to  starve. 

Consider  what  it  would  mean  to  be  under  a 
socialist  state.  Here  for  example  is  a  worker 
who  is,  who  says  he  is,  too  ill  to  work.  He 
begs  that  he  may  be  set  free.  The  grave  of- 
ficial, as  Mr.  Bellamy  sees  him,  looks  at  the 
worker's  tongue.  "My  poor  fellow,"  says  he, 
"you  are  indeed  ill.  Go  and  rest  yourself  un- 
der a  shady  tree  while  the  others  are  busy  with 
the  harvest."  So  speaks  the  ideal  official  deal- 


116  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

ing  with  the  ideal  citizen  in  the  dream  life 
among  the  angels.  But  suppose  that  the 
worker,  being  not  an  angel  but  a  human  being, 
is  but  a  mere  hulking,  lazy  brute  who  prefers 
to  sham  sick  rather  than  endure  the  tedium  of 
toil.  Or  suppose  that  the  grave  official  is  not 
an  angel,  but  a  man  of  hateful  heart  or  one 
with  a  personal  spite  to  vent  upon  his  victim. 
What  then?  How  could  one  face  a  regime  in 
which  the  everlasting  taskmaster  held  control? 
There  is  nothing  like  it  among  us  at  the  pres- 
ent day  except  within  the  melancholy  precincts 
of  the  penitentiary.  There  and  there  only,  the 
socialist  system  is  in  operation. 

Who  can  deny  that  under  such  a  system 
the  man  with  the  glib  tongue  and  the  persuasive 
manner,  the  babbling  talker  and  the  scheming 
organizer,  would  secure  all  the  places  of  power 
and  profit,  while  patient  merit  went  to  the  wall? 

Or  turn  from  the  gray  officials  to  the  purple 
citizens  of  the  soap  bubble  commonwealth  of 
socialism.  All  work,  we  are  told,  and  all  re- 
ceive their  remuneration.  We  must  not  think 
of  it  as  money-wages,  but,  all  said  and  done, 


of  Social  Justice  117 

an  allotted  share  of  goods,  marked  out  upon  a 
card,  comes  pretty  much  to  the  same  thing. 
The  wages  that  the  citizens  receive  must  either 
be  equal  or  not  equal.  That  at  least  is  plain 
logic.  Either  everybody  gets  exactly  the  same 
wages  irrespective  of  capability  and  diligence, 
or  else  the  wages  or  salaries  or  whatever  one 
calls  them,  are  graded,  so  that  one  receives 
much  and  the  other  little. 

Now  either  of  these  alternatives  spells  dis- 
aster. If  the  wages  are  graded  according  to 
capacity,  then  the  grading  is  done  by  the  ever- 
lasting elective  officials.  They  can,  and  they 
will,  vote  themselves  and  their  friends  or  adher- 
ents into  the  good  jobs  and  the  high  places. 
The  advancement  of  a  bright  and  capable 
young  man  will  depend,  not  upon  what  he  does, 
but  upon  what  the  elected  bosses  are  pleased 
to  do  with  him;  not  upon  the  strength  of  his 
own  hands,  but  upon  the  strength  of  the  "pull" 
that  he  has  with  the  bosses  who  run  the  part  of 
the  industry  that  he  is  in.  Unequal  wages  un- 
der socialism  would  mean  a  fierce  and  corrupt 
scramble  for  power,  office  and  emolument,  be- 


118  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

side  which  the  utmost  aberrations  of  Tammany 
Hall  would  seem  as  innocuous  as  a  Sunday 
School  picnic. 

"But,"  objects  Mr.  Bellamy  or  any  other 
socialist,  "you  forget.  Please  remember  that 
under  socialism  the  scramble  for  wealth  is 
limited;  no  man  can  own  capital,  but  only  con- 
sumption goods.  The  most  that  any  man  may 
acquire  is  merely  the  articles  that  he  wants  to 
consume,  not  the  engines  and  machinery  of  pro- 
duction itself.  Hence  even  avarice  dwindles 
and  dies,  when  its  wonted  food  of  'capitalism' 
is  withdrawn." 

But  surely  this  point  of  view  is  the  very  con- 
verse of  the  teachings  of  common  sense.  "Con- 
sumption goods"  are  the  very  things  that  we 
do  want.  All  else  is  but  a  means  to  them. 
One  admits,  as  per  exception,  the  queer  acquis- 
itiveness of  the  miser-millionaire,  playing  the 
game  for  his  own  sake.  Undoubtedly  he  ex- 
ists. Undoubtedly  his  existence  is  a  product  of 
the  system,  a  pathological  product,  a  kind  of 
elephantiasis  of  individualism.  But  speaking 
broadly,  consumption  goods,  present  or  future, 


of  Social  Justice  119 

are  the  end  in  sight  of  the  industrial  struggle. 
Give  me  the  houses  and  the  gardens,  the 
yachts,  the  motor  cars  and  the  champagne  and 
I  do  not  care  who  owns  the  gravel  crusher  and 
the  steam  plow.  And  if  under  a  socialist  com- 
monwealth a  man  can  vote  to  himself  or  gain 
by  the  votes  of  his  adherents,  a  vast  income  of 
consumption  goods  and  leave  to  his  unhappy 
fellow  a  narrow  minimum  of  subsistence,  then 
the  resulting  evil  of  inequality  is  worse,  far 
worse  than  it  could  even  be  to-day. 

Or  try,  if  one  will,  the  other  horn  of  the 
dilemma.  That,  too,  one  will  find  as  ill  a  rest- 
ing place  as  an  upright  thistle.  Let  the  wages, 
— as  with  Mr.  Bellamy, — all  be  equal.  The 
managers  then  cannot  vote  themselves  large 
emoluments  if  they  try.  But  what  about  the 
purple  citizens?  Will  they  work,  or  will  they 
lie  round  in  their  purple  garments  and  loaf? 
Work?  Why  should  they  work,  their  pay  is 
there  "fresh  and  fresh"?  Why  should  they 
turn  up  on  time  for  their  task?  Why  should 
they  not  dawdle  at  their  labor  sitting  upon  the 
fence  in  endless  colloquy  while  the  harvest  rots 


120  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

upon  the  stalk?  If  among  them  is  one  who 
cares  to  work  with  a  fever  of  industry  that  even 
socialism  cannot  calm,  let  him  do  it.  We,  his 
fellows,  will  take  our  time.  Our  pay  is  there 
as  certain  and  as  sound  as  his.  Not  for  us  the 
eager  industry  and  the  fond  plans  for  the  fu- 
ture,— for  the  home  and  competence — that 
spurred  on  the  strenuous  youth  of  old  days, — 
not  for  us  the  earnest  planning  of  the  husband 
and  wife  thoughtful  and  anxious  for  the  future 
of  their  little  ones.  Not  for  us  the  honest 
penny  saved  for  a  rainy  day.  Here  in  the 
dreamland  of  socialism  there  are  no  rainy  days. 
It  is  sunshine  all  the  time  in  this  lotus  land  of 
the  loafer.  And  for  the  future,  let  the  "State" 
provide;  for  the  children's  welfare  let  the 
"State"  take  thought;  while  we  live  it  shall  feed 
us,  when  we  fall  ill  it  shall  tend  us  and  when 
we  die  it  shall  bury  us.  Meantime  let  us  eat, 
drink  and  be  merry  and  work  as  little  as  we 
may.  Let  us  sit  among  the  flowers.  It  is  too 
hot  to  labor.  Let  us  warm  ourselves  beside 
the  public  stove.  It  is  too  cold  to  work. 
But  what?  Such  conduct,  you  say,  will  not 


of  Social  Justice  121 

be  allowed  in  the  commonwealth.  Idleness  and 
slovenly,  careless  work  will  be  forbidden? 
Ah !  then  you  must  mean  that  beside  the  worker 
will  be  the  overseer  with  the  whip;  the  time- 
clock  will  mark  his  energy  upon  its  dial;  the 
machine  will  register  his  effort;  and  if  he  will 
not  work  there  is  lurking  for  him  in  the  back- 
ground the  shadowed  door  of  the  prison.  Ex- 
actly and  logically  so.  Socialism,  in  other 
words,  is  slavery. 

But  here  the  socialist  and  his  school  inter- 
pose at  once  with  an  objection.  Under  the 
socialist  commonwealth,  they  say,  the  people 
will  want  to  work;  they  will  have  acquired  a 
new  civic  spirit;  they  will  work  eagerly  and 
cheerfully  for  the  sake  of  the  public  good  and 
from  their  love  of  the  system  under  which  they 
live.  The  loafer  will  be  extinct.  The  sponge 
and  the  parasite  will  have  perished.  Even 
crime  itself,  so  the  socialist  tells  us,  will  di- 
minish to  the  vanishing  point,  till  there  is  noth- 
ing of  it  except  here  and  there  a  sort  of  patho- 
logical survival,  an  atavism,  or  a  "throwing 
back"  to  the  forgotten  sins  of  the  grandfathers. 


122  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

Here  and  there,  some  poor  fellow  afflicted  with 
this  disease  may  break  into  my  socialistic  house 
and  steal  my  pictures  and  my  wine.  Poor 
chap !  Deal  with  him  very  gently.  He  is  not 
wicked.  He  is  ill. 

This  last  argument,  in  a  word,  begs  the  whole 
question.  With  perfect  citizens  any  govern- 
ment is  good.  In  a  population  of  angels  a 
socialistic  commonwealth  would  work  to  per- 
fection. But  until  we  have  the  angels  we  must 
keep  the  commonwealth  waiting. 

Nor  is  it  necessary  here  to  discuss  the  hundred 
and  one  modifications  of  the  socialistic  plan. 
Each  and  all  fail  for  one  and  the  same  reason. 
The  municipal  socialist,  despairing  of  the  huge 
collective  state,  dreams  of  his  little  town  as  an 
organic  unit  in  which  all  share  alike ;  the  syndi- 
calist in  his  fancy  sees  his  trade  united  into  a 
co-operative  body  in  which  all  are  equal;  the 
gradualist,  in  whose  mind  lingers  the  leaven  of 
doubt,  frames  for  himself  a  hazy  vision  of  a 
prolonged  preparation  for  the  future,  of  social- 
ism achieved  little  by  little,  the  citizens  being 
trained  as  it  goes  on  till  they  are  to  reach  some- 


of  Social  Justice  123 

how  or  somewhere  in  cloud  land  the  nirvana 
of  the  elimination  of  self;  like  indeed,  they  are, 
to  the  horse  in  the  ancient  fable  that  was  being 
trained  to  live  without  food  but  died,  alas,  just 
as  the  experiment  was  succeeding. 

There  is  no  way  out.  Socialism  is  but  a 
dream,  a  bubble  floating  in  the  air.  In  the 
light  of  its  opalescent  colors  we  may  see  many 
visions  of  what  we  might  be  if  we  were  better 
than  we  are,  we  may  learn  much  that  is  useful 
as  to  what  we  can  be  even  as  we  are;  but  if  we 
mistake  the  floating  bubble  for  the  marble  pal- 
aces of  the  city  of  desire,  it  will  lead  us  forward 
in  our  pursuit  till  we  fall  over  the  edge  of  the 
abyss  beyond  which  is  chaos. 


VII. — What  Is  Possible  and  What  Is  Not 

SOCIALISM,   then,   will  not  work,   and 
neither   will   individualism,   or   at  least 
the   older   individualism   that   we   have 
hitherto   made   the   basis   of  the   social 
order.     Here,   therefore,   stands  humanity,   in 
the  middle  of  its  narrow  path  in  sheer  perplex- 
ity, not  knowing  which  way  to  turn.     On  either 
side  is  the  brink  of  an  abyss.     On  one  hand  is 
the  yawning  gulf  of  social  catastrophe  repre- 
sented by  socialism.     On  the  other,  the  slower, 
but  no  less  inevitable  disaster  that  would  attend 
the  continuation  in  its  present  form  of  the  sys- 
tem under  which  we  have  lived.     Either  way 
lies  destruction;  the  one  swift  and  immediate 
as  a  fall  from  a  great  height;  the  other  grad- 
ual, but  equally  dreadful,  as  the  slow  strangu- 
lation in  a  morass.     Somewhere  between  the 
two  lies  such  narrow  safety  as  may  be  found. 
124 


The  Unsolved  Riddle  125 

The  Ancients  were  fond  of  the  metaphor, 
taken  from  the  vexed  Sicilian  Seas,  of  Scylla 
and  Charybdis.  The  twin  whirlpools  threat- 
ened the  affrightened  mariner  on  either  side. 
To  avoid  one  he  too  hastily  cast  the  ship  to 
destruction  in  the  other.  Such  is  precisely  the 
position  that  has  been  reached  at  the  present 
crisis  in  the  course  of  human  progress.  When 
we  view  the  shortcomings  of  the  present  indi- 
vidualism, its  waste  of  energy,  its  fretful  over- 
work, its  cruel  inequality  and  the  bitter  lot  that 
it  brings  to  the  uncounted  millions  of  the  sub- 
merged, we  are  inclined  to  cry  out  against  it, 
and  to  listen  with  a  ready  ear  to  the  easy  prom- 
ises of  the  idealist.  But  when  we  turn  to  the 
contrasted  fallacies  of  socialism,  its  obvious 
impracticality  and  the  dark  gulf  of  social  chaos 
that  yawns  behind  it,  we  are  driven  back  shud- 
dering to  cherish  rather  the  ills  we  have  than 
fly  to  others  we  know  not  of. 

Yet  out  of  the  whole  discussion  of  the  mat- 
ter some  few  things  begin  to  merge  into  the 
clearness  of  certain  day.  It  is  clear  enough 
on  the  one  hand  that  we  can  expect  no  sudden 


126  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

and  complete  transformation  of  the  world  in 
which  we  live.  Such  a  process  is  impossible. 
The  industrial  system  is  too  complex,  its  roots 
are  too  deeply  struck  and  its  whole  organism 
of  too  delicate  a  growth  to  permit  us  to  tear  it 
from  the  soil.  Nor  is  humanity  itself  fitted  for 
the  kind  of  transformation  which  fills  the 
dreams  of  the  perfectionist.  The  principle  of 
selfishness  that  has  been  the  survival  instinct  of 
existence  since  life  first  crawled  from  the  slime 
of  a  world  in  evolution,  is  as  yet  but  little  mit- 
igated. In  the  long  process  of  time  some 
higher  cosmic  sense  may  take  its  place.  It  has 
not  done  so  yet.  If  the  kingdom  of  socialism 
were  opened  to-morrow,  there  are  but  few 
fitted  to  enter. 

But  on  the  other  hand  it  is  equally  clear  that 
the  doctrine  of  "every  man  for  himself,"  as 
it  used  to  be  applied,  is  done  with  forever. 
The  time  has  gone  by  when  a  man  shall  starve 
asking  in  vain  for  work;  when  the  listless  out- 
cast shall  draw  his  rags  shivering  about  him 
unheeded  of  his  fellows;  when  children  shall 
be  born  in  hunger  and  bred  in  want  and  broken 


of  Social  Justice  127 

in  toil  with  never  a  chance  in  life.  If  noth- 
ing else  will  end  these  things,  fear  will  do  it. 
The  hardest  capitalist  that  ever  gripped  his 
property  with  the  iron  clasp  of  legal  right  re- 
laxes his  grasp  a  little  when  he  thinks  of  the 
possibilities  of  a  social  conflagration.  In  this 
respect  five  years  of  war  have  taught  us  more 
than  a  century  of  peace.  It  has  set  in  a  clear 
light  new  forms  of  social  obligation.  The  war 
brought  with  it  conscription — not  as  we  used 
to  see  it,  as  the  last  horror  of  military  tyranny, 
but  as  the  crowning  pride  of  democracy.  An 
inconceivable  revolution  in  the  thought  of  the 
English  speaking  peoples  has  taken  place  in 
respect  to  it.  The  obligation  of  every  man, 
according  to  his  age  and  circumstance,  to  take 
up  arms  for  his  country  and,  if  need  be,  to  die 
for  it,  is  henceforth  the  recognized  basis  of 
progressive  democracy. 

But  conscription  has  its  other  side.  The 
obligation  to  die  must  carry  with  it  the  right 
to  live.  If  every  citizen  owes  it  to  society  that 
he  must  fight  for  it  in  case  of  need,  then  so- 
ciety owes  to  every  citizen  the  opportunity  of 


128  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

a  livelihood.  "Unemployment,"  in  the  case  of 
the  willing  and  able  becomes  henceforth  a  so- 
cial crime.  Every  democratic  Government 
must  henceforth  take  as  the  starting  point  of 
its  industrial  policy,  that  there  shall  be  no  such 
thing  as  able  bodied  men  and  women  "out  of 
work,"  looking  for  occupation  and  unable  to 
find  it.  Work  must  either  be  found  or  must 
be  provided  by  the  State  itself. 

Yet  it  is  clear  that  a  policy  of  state  work 
and  state  pay  for  all  who  are  otherwise  unable 
to  find  occupation  involves  appalling  difficulties. 
The  opportunity  will  loom  large  for  the  prodi- 
gal waste  of  money,  for  the  undertaking  of 
public  works  of  no  real  utility  and  for  the  sub- 
sidizing of  an  army  of  loafers.  But  the  dif- 
ficulties, great  though  they  are,  are  not  in- 
superable. The  payment  for  state  labor  of 
this  kind  can  be  kept  low  enough  to  make  it 
the  last  resort  rather  than  the  ultimate  am- 
bition of  the  worker.  Nor  need  the  work  be 
useless.  In  new  countries,  especially  such  as 
Canada  and  the  United  States  and  Australia, 
the  development  of  latent  natural  assets  could 


of  Social  Justice  129 

absorb  the  labor  of  generations.     There   are 
still  unredeemed  empires  in  the  west.     Clearly 
enough  a  certain  modicum  of  public  honesty 
and  integrity  is  essential  for  such  a  task;  more, 
undoubtedly,  than  we  have  hitherto  been  able 
to  enlist  in  the  service  of  the  commonwealth. 
But  without  it  we  perish.     Social  betterment 
must  depend  at  every  stage  on  the   force  of 
public  spirit  and  public  morality  that  inspires  it. 
So  much  for  the  case  of  those  who  are  able 
and  willing  to  work.     There  remain  still  the 
uncounted  thousands  who  by  accident   or  ill- 
ness, age  or  infirmity,  are  unable  to  maintain 
themselves.     For  these  people,  under  the  older 
dispensation,  there  was  nothing  but  the  poor- 
house,  the  jail  or  starvation  by  the  roadside. 
The  narrow  individualism   of   the   nineteenth 
century  refused  to  recognize  the  social  duty  of 
supporting      somebody      else's      grandmother. 
Such  charity  began,  and  ended,  at  home.     But 
even  with  the  passing  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury an  awakened  sense  of  the  collective  re- 
sponsibility of  society  towards  its  weaker  mem- 
bers began  to  impress  itself  upon  public  policy. 


130  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

Old  age  pension  laws  and  national  insurance 
against  illness  and  accident  were  already  be- 
ing built  into  the  legislative  codes  of  the  demo- 
cratic countries.  The  experience  of  the  war 
has  enormously  increased  this  sense  of  social 
solidarity.  It  is  clear  now  that  our  fortunes 
are  not  in  our  individual  keeping.  We  stand 
or  fall  as  a  nation.  And  the  nation  which 
neglects  the  aged  and  infirm,  or  which  leaves  a 
family  to  be  shipwrecked  as  the  result  of  a 
single  accident  to  a  breadwinner,  cannot  sur- 
vive as  against  a  nation  in  which  the  welfare 
of  each  is  regarded  as  contributory  to  the  safety 
of  all.  Even  the  purest  selfishness  would  dic- 
tate a  policy  of  social  insurance. 

There  is  no  need  to  discuss  the  particular 
way  in  which  this  policy  can  best  be  carried 
out.  It  will  vary  with  the  circumstances  of 
each  community.  The  action  of  the  munici- 
pality, or  of  the  state  or  province,  or  of  the 
central  government  itself  may  be  called  into 
play.  But  in  one  form  or  another,  the  eco- 
nomic loss  involved  in  illness  and  infirmity  must 
be  shifted  from  the  shoulders  of  the  individual 


of  Social  Justice  131 

to  those  of  society  at  large.  There  was  but 
little  realization  of  this  obligation  in  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Only  in  the  sensational  mo- 
ments of  famine,  flood  or  pestilence  was  a  gen- 
eral social  effort  called  forth.  But  in  the 
clearer  view  of  the  social  bond  which  the  war 
has  given  us  we  can  see  that  famine  and  pesti- 
lence are  merely  exaggerated  forms  of  what 
is  happening  every  day  in  our  midst. 

We  spoke  much  during  the  war  of  "man 
power."  We  suddenly  realized  that  after  all 
the  greatness  and  strength  of  a  nation  is  made 
up  of  the  men  and  women  who  compose  it. 
Its  money,  in  the  narrow  sense,  is  nothing; 
a  set  of  meaningless  chips  and  counters  piled 
upon  a  banker's  table  ready  to  fall  at  a  touch. 
Even  before  the  war  we  had  begun  to  talk 
eagerly  and  anxiously  of  the  conservation  of 
national  resources,  of  the  need  of  safeguard- 
ing the  forests  and  fisheries  and  the  mines. 
These  are  important  things.  But  the  war  has 
shown  that  the  most  important  thing  of  all  is 
the  conservation  of  men  and  women. 

The  attitude  of  the  nineteenth  century  upon 


132  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

this  point  was  little  short  of  insane.  The  mel- 
ancholy doctrine  of  Malthus  had  perverted  the 
public  mind.  Because  it  was  difficult  for  a  poor 
man  to  bring  up  a  family,  the  hasty  conclusion 
was  reached  that  a  family  ought  not  to  be 
brought  up.  But  the  war  has  entirely  inverted 
and  corrected  this  point  of  view.  The  father 
and  mother  who  were  able  to  send  six  sturdy, 
native-born  sons  to  the  conflict  were  regarded 
as  benefactors  of  the  nation.  But  these  six 
sturdy  sons  had  been,  some  twenty  years  before, 
six  "puling  infants,"  viewed  with  gloomy  dis- 
approval by  the  Malthusian  bachelor.  If  the 
strength  of  the  nation  lies  in  its  men  and  women 
there  is  only  one  way  to  increase  it.  Before 
the  war  it  was  thought  that  a  simpler  and  eas- 
ier method  of  increase  could  be  found  in  the 
wholesale  import  of  Austrians,  Bulgarians  and 
Czecho-Slovaks.  The  newer  nations  boasted 
proudly  of  their  immigration  tables.  The  fal- 
lacy is  apparent  now.  Those  who  really  count 
in  a  nation  and  those  who  govern  its  destinies 
for  good  or  ill  are  those  who  are  born  in  it. 
It  is  difficult  to  over-estimate  the  harm  that 


of  Social  Justice  133 

has  been  done  to  public  policy  by  this  same 
Malthusian  theory.  It  has  opposed  to  every 
proposal  of  social  reform  an  obstacle  that 
seemed  insuperable, — the  danger  of  a  rapid 
overincrease  of  population  that  would  pauper- 
ize the  community.  Population,  it  was  said, 
tends  always  to  press  upon  the  heels  of  sub- 
sistence. If  the  poor  are  pampered,  they  will 
breed  fast:  the  time  will  come  when  there  will 
not  be  food  for  all  and  we  shall  perish  in  a 
common  destruction.  Seen  in  this  light,  infant 
mortality  and  the  cruel  wastage  of  disease  were 
viewed  with  complacence.  It  was  "Nature's" 
own  process  at  work.  The  "unfit,"  so  called, 
were  being  winnowed  out  that  only  the  best 
might  survive.  The  biological  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution was  misinterpreted  and  misapplied  to 
social  policy. 

But  in  the  organic  world  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  the  "fit"  or  the  "unfit,"  in  any  higher 
or  moral  sense.  The  most  hideous  forms  of 
life  may  "survive"  and  thrust  aside  the  most 
beautiful.  It  is  only  by  a  confusion  of  thought 
that  the  processes  of  organic  nature  which  ren- 


134  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

der  every  foot  of  fertile  ground  the  scene  of 
unending  conflict  can  be  used  to  explain  away 
the  death  of  children  of  the  slums.  The  whole 
theory  of  survival  is  only  a  statement  of  what 
is,  not  of  what  ought  to  be.  The  moment  that 
we  introduce  the  operation  of  human  volition 
and  activity,  that,  too,  becomes  one  of  the  fac- 
tors of  "survival."  The  dog,  the  cat,  and  the 
cow  live  by  man's  will,  where  the  wolf  and  the 
hyena  have  perished. 

But  it  is  time  that  the  Malthusian  doctrine, — 
the  fear  of  over-population  as  a  hindrance  to 
social  reform, — was  dismissed  from  considera- 
tion. It  is  at  best  but  a  worn-out  scarecrow 
shaking  its  vain  rags  in  the  wind.  Population, 
it  is  true,  increases  in  a  geometrical  ratio.  The 
human  race,  if  favored  by  environment,  can 
easily  double  itself  every  twenty-five  years.  If 
it  did  this,  the  time  must  come,  through  sheer 
power  of  multiplication,  when  there  would  not 
be  standing  room  for  it  on  the  globe.  All  of 
this  is  undeniable,  but  it  is  quite  wide  of  the 
mark.  It  is  time  enough  to  cross  a  bridge  when 
we  come  to  it.  The  "standing  room"  prob- 


of  Social  Justice  135 

lem  is  still  removed  from  us  by  such  uncounted 
generations  that  we  need  give  no  thought  to  it. 
The  physical  resources  of  the  globe  are  as  yet 
only  tapped,  and  not  exhausted.  We  have  done 
little  more  than  scratch  the  surface.  Because 
we  are  crowded  here  and  there  in  the  ant-hills 
of  our  cities,  we  dream  that  the  world  is  full. 
Because,  under  our  present  system,  we  do  not 
raise  enough  food  for  all,  we  fear  that  the  food 
supply  is  running  short.  All  this  is  pure  fancy. 
Let  any  one  consider  in  his  mind's  eye  the  enor- 
mous untouched  assets  still  remaining  for  man- 
kind in  the  vast  spaces  filled  with  the  tangled 
forests  of  South  America,  or  the  exuberant  fer- 
tility of  equatorial  Africa  or  the  huge  plains  of 
Canada,  Australia,  Southern  Siberia  and  the 
United  States,  as  yet  only  thinly  dotted  with 
human  settlement.  There  is  no  need  to  draw 
up  an  anxious  balance  sheet  of  our  assets. 
There  is  still  an  uncounted  plenty.  And  every 
human  being  born  upon  the  world  represents  a 
power  of  work  that,  rightly  directed,  more  than 
supplies  his  wants.  The  fact  that  as  an  infant 
he  does  not  maintain  himself  has  nothing  to  do 


136  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

with   the   case.     This  was   true    even   in   the 
Garden  of  Eden. 

The  fundamental  error  of  the  Malthusian 
theory  of  population  and  poverty  is  to  confound 
the  difficulties  of  human  organization  with  the 
question  of  physical  production.  Our  existing 
poverty  is  purely  a  problem  in  the  direction  and 
distribution  of  human  effort.  It  has  no  con- 
nection as  yet  with  the  question  of  the  total 
available  means  of  subsistence.  Some  day,  in 
a  remote  future,  in  which  under  an  improved 
social  system  the  numbers  of  mankind  might 
increase  to  the  full  power  of  the  natural  capac- 
ity of  multiplication,  such  a  question  might  con- 
ceivably disturb  the  equanimity  of  mankind. 
But  it  need  not  now.  It  is  only  one  of  many 
disasters  that  must  sooner  or  later  overtake 
mankind.  The  sun,  so  the  astronomer  tells  us, 
is  cooling  down;  the  night  is  coming;  an  all- 
pervading  cold  will  some  day  chill  into  rigid 
death  the  last  vestige  of  organic  life.  Our 
poor  planet  will  be  but  a  silent  ghost  whirling 
on  its  dark  path  in  the  starlight.  This  ulti- 


of  Social  Justice  137 

mate  disaster  is,  as  far  as  our  vision  goes,  in- 
evitable. Yet  no  one  concerns  himself  with 
it.  So  should  it  be  with  the  danger  of  the  ulti- 
mate overcrowding  of  the  globe. 

I  lay  stress  upon  this  problem  of  the  increase 
of  population  because,  to  my  thinking,  it  is  in 
this  connection  that  the  main  work  and  the  best 
hope  of  social  reform  can  be  found.  The  chil- 
dren of  the  race  should  be  the  very  blossom  of 
its  fondest  hopes.  Under  the  present  order 
and  with  the  present  gloomy  preconceptions 
they  have  been  the  least  of  its  collective  cares. 
Yet  here — and  here  more  than  anywhere — 
is  the  point  towards  which  social  effort  and 
social  legislation  may  be  directed  immediately 
and  successfully.  The  moment  that  we  get 
away  from  the  idea  that  the  child  is  a  mere 
appendage  of  the  parent,  bound  to  share  good 
fortune  and  ill,  wealth  and  starvation,  accord- 
ing to  the  parent's  lot,  the  moment  we  regard 
the  child  as  itself  a  member  of  society — clothed 
in  social  rights — a  burden  for  the  moment  but 
an  asset  for  the  future — we  turn  over  a  new 


138  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

leaf  in  the  book  of  human  development,  we 
pass  a  new  milestone  on  the  upward  path  of 
progress. 

It  should  be  recognized  in  the  coming  order 
of  society,  that  every  child  of  the  nation  has 
the  right  to  be  clothed  and  fed  and  trained 
irrespective  of  its  parents'  lot.  Our  feeble  be- 
ginnings in  the  direction  of  housing,  sanitation, 
child  welfare  and  education,  should  be  ex- 
panded at  whatever  cost  into  something  truly 
national  and  all  embracing.  The  ancient 
grudging  selfishness  that  would  not  feed  other 
people's  children  should  be  cast  out.  In  the 
war  time  the  wealthy  bachelor  and  the  spinster 
of  advancing  years  took  it  for  granted  that 
other  people's  children  should  fight  for  them. 
The  obligation  must  apply  both  ways. 

No  society  is  properly  organized  until  every 
child  that  is  born  into  it  shall  have  an  oppor- 
tunity in  life.  Success  in  life  and  capacity  to 
live  we  cannot  give.  But  opportunity  we  can. 
We  can  at  least  see  that  the  gifts  that  are  laid 
in  the  child's  cradle  by  nature  are  not  oblit- 
erated by  the  cruel  fortune  of  the  accident  of 


of  Social  Justice  139 

birth:  that  its  brain  and  body  arc  not  stunted 
by  lack  of  food  and  air  and  by  the  heavy  bur- 
den of  premature  toil.  The  playtime  of  child- 
hood should  be  held  sacred  by  the  nation. 

This,  as  I  see  it,  should  be  the  first  and  the 
greatest  effort  of  social  reform.  For  the 
adult  generation  of  to-day  many  things  are  no 
longer  possible.  The  time  has  passed.  We 
are,  as  viewed  with  a  comprehensive  eye,  a 
damaged  race.  Few  of  us  in  mind  or  body  are 
what  we  might  be ;  and  millions  of  us,  the  vast 
majority  of  industrial  mankind  known  as  the 
working  class,  are  distorted  beyond  repair  from 
what  they  might  have  been.  In  older  societies 
this  was  taken  for  granted:  the  poor  and  the 
humble  and  the  lowly  reproduced  from  gen- 
eration to  generation,  as  they  grew  to  adult  life, 
the  starved  brains  and  stunted  outlook  of  their 
forbears, — starved  and  stunted  only  by  lack  of 
opportunity.  For  nature  knows  of  no  such  dif- 
ferences in  original  capacity  between  the  chil- 
dren of  the  fortunate  and  the  unfortunate. 
Yet  on  this  inequality,  made  by  circumstance, 
was  based  the  whole  system  of  caste,  the  strati- 


140  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

fication  of  the  gentle  and  the  simple  on  which 
society  rested.  In  the  past  it  may  have  been 
necessary.  It  is  not  so  now.  If,  with  all  our 
vast  apparatus  of  machinery  and  power,  we 
cannot  so  arrange  society  that  each  child  has 
an  opportunity  in  life,  it  would  be  better  to 
break  the  machinery  in  pieces  and  return  to 
the  woods  from  which  we  came. 

Put  into  the  plainest  of  prose,  then,  we  are 
saying  that  the  government  of  every  country 
ought  to  supply  work  and  pay  for  the  unem- 
ployed, maintenance  for  the  infirm  and  aged, 
and  education  and  opportunity  for  the  children. 
These  are  vast  tasks.  And  they  involve,  of 
course,  a  financial  burden  not  dreamed  of  be- 
fore the  war.  But  here  again  the  war  has 
taught  us  many  things.  It  would  have  seemed 
inconceivable  before,  that  a  man  of  great 
wealth  should  give  one-half  of  his  income  to 
the  state.  The  financial  burden  of  the  war, 
as  the  full  measure  of  it  dawned  upon  our 
minds,  seemed  to  betoken  a  universal  bank- 
ruptcy. But  the  sequel  is  going  to  show  that 
the  finance  of  the  war  will  prove  to  be  a  lesson 


of  Social  Justice  141 

in  the  finance  of  peace.  The  new  burden  has 
come  to  stay.  No  modern  state  can  hope  to 
survive  unless  it  meets  the  kind  of  social  claims 
on  the  part  of  the  unemployed,  the  destitute  and 
the  children  that  have  been  described  above. 
And  it  cannot  do  this  unless  it  continues  to  use 
the  terrific  engine  of  taxation  already  fash- 
ioned in  the  war.  Undoubtedly  the  progres- 
sive income  tax  and  the  tax  on  profits  and  tax- 
ation of  inheritance  must  be  maintained  to  an 

extent  never  dreamed  of  before. 

<«. 

But  the  peace  finance  and  the  war  finance 
will  differ  in  one  most  important  respect.  The 
war  finance  was  purely  destructive.  From  it 
came  national  security  and  the  triumph  of  right 
over  wrong.  No  one  would  belittle  the  worth 
of  the  sacrifice.  But  in  the  narrower  sense  of 
production,  of  bread  winning,  there  came  noth- 
ing; or  nothing  except  a  new  power  of  organi- 
zation, a  new  technical  skill  and  a  new  aspira- 
tion towards  better  things.  But  the  burden  of 
peace  finance  directed  towards  social  efforts 
will  bring  a  direct  return.  Every  cent  that 
is  spent  upon  the  betterment  of  the  popu- 


142  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

lation  will  come  back,  sooner  or  later,  as  two. 

But  all  of  this  deals  as  yet  only  with  the  field 
of  industry  and  conduct  in  which  the  state  rules 
supreme.  Governmental  care  of  the  unem- 
ployed, the  infant  and  the  infirm,  sounds  like 
a  chapter  in  socialism.  If  the  same  regime 
were  extended  over  the  whole  area  of  produc- 
tion, we  should  have  socialism  itself  and  a  mere 
soap-bubble  bursting  into  fragments.  There 
is  no  need,  however,  to  extend  the  regime  of 
compulsion  over  the  whole  field.  The  vast 
mass  of  human  industrial  effort  must  still  lie 
outside  of  the  immediate  control  of  the  gov- 
ernment. Every  man  will  still  earn  his  own 
living  and  that  of  his  family  as  best  he  can, 
relying  first  and  foremost  upon  his  own  ef- 
forts. 

One  naturally  asks,  then,  To  what  extent  can 
social  reform  penetrate  into  the  ordinary  oper- 
ation of  industry  itself?  Granted  that  it  is  im- 
possible for  the  state  to  take  over  the  whole 
industry  of  the  nation,  does  that  mean  that  the 
present  inequalities  must  continue?  The 
framework  in  which  our  industrial  life  is  set 


of  Social  Justice  143 

cannot  be  readily  broken  asunder.  But  we  can 
to  a  great  extent  ease  the  rigidity  of  its  out- 
lines. A  legislative  code  that  starts  from 
sounder  principles  than  those  which  have  ob- 
tained hitherto  can  do  a  great  deal  towards 
progressive  betterment.  Each  decade  can  be 
an  improvement  upon  the  last.  Hitherto  we 
have  been  hampered  at  every  turn  by  the  sup- 
posed obstacle  of  immutable  economic  laws. 
The  theory  of  "natural"  wages  and  prices  of 
a  supposed  economic  order  that  could  not  be 
disturbed,  set  up  a  sort  of  legislative  paralysis. 
The  first  thing  needed  is  to  get  away  entirely 
from  all  such  preconceptions,  to  recognize  that 
the  "natural"  order  of  society,  based  on  the 
"natural"  liberty,  does  not  correspond  with  real 
justice  and  real  liberty  at  all,  but  works  injus- 
tice at  every  turn.  And  at  every  turn  intrusive 
social  legislation  must  seek  to  prevent  such  in- 
justice. 

It  is  no  part  of  the  present  essay  to  attempt 
to  detail  the  particulars  of  a  code  of  social  leg- 
islation. That  must  depend  in  every  case  upon 
the  particular  circumstances  of  the  community 


144  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

i 
concerned.     But  some  indication  may  be  given 

here  of  the  kind  of  legislation  that  may  serve 
to  render  the  conditions  of  industry  more  in 
conformity  with  social  justice.  Let  us  take,  as 
a  conspicuous  example,  the  case  of  the  Min- 
imum wage  law.  Here  is  a  thing  sternly  con- 
demned in  the  older  thought  as  an  economic 
impossibility.  It  was  claimed,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  under  free  contract  a  man  was  paid 
what  he  earned  and  no  law  could  make  it  more. 
But  the  older  theory  was  wrong.  The  min- 
imum wage  law  ought  to  form,  in  one  fashion 
or  another,  a  part  of  the  code  of  every  com- 
munity. It  may  be  applied  by  specific  legisla- 
tion from  a  central  power,  or  it  may  be  applied 
by  the  discretionary  authority  of  district  boards, 
or  it  may  be  regulated, — as  it  has  been  in  some 
of  the  beginnings  already  made, — within  the 
compass  of  each  industry  or  trade.  But  the 
principle  involved  is  sound.  The  wage  as  paid 
becomes  a  part  of  the  conditions  of  industry. 
Interest,  profits  and,  later,  the  direction  of  con- 
sumption and  then  of  production,  conform 
themselves  to  it. 


of  Social  Justice  145 

True  it  is,  that  in  this  as  in  all  cases  of  social 
legislation,  no  application  of  the  law  can  be 
made  so  sweeping  and  so  immediate  as  to  dis- 
locate the  machine  and  bring  industry  to  a  stop. 
It  is  probable  that  at  any  particular  time  and 
place  the  legislative  minimum  wage  cannot  be 
very  much  in  advance  of  the  ordinary  or  aver- 
age wage  of  the  people  in  employment.  But 
its  virtue  lies  in  its  progression.  The  modest 
increase  of  to-day  leads  to  the  fuller  increase 
of  to-morrow.  Properly  applied,  the  capitalist 
and  the  employer  of  labor  need  have  nothing 
to  fear  from  it.  Its  ultimate  effect  will  not 
fall  upon  them,  but  will  serve  merely  to  alter 
the  direction  of  human  effort. 

Precisely  the  same  reasoning  holds  good  of 
the  shortening  of  the  hours  of  labor  both  by 
legislative  enactment  and  by  collective  organi- 
zation. Here  again  the  first  thing  necessary 
is  a  clear  vision  of  the  goal  towards  which  we 
are  to  strive.  The  hours  of  labor  are  too  long. 
The  world  has  been  caught  in  the  wheels  of  its 
own  machinery  which  will  not  stop.  With  each 
advance  in  invention  and  mechanical  power  it 


146  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

works  harder  still.  New  and  feverish  desires 
for  luxuries  replace  each  older  want  as  satisfied. 
The  nerves  of  our  industrial  civilization  are 
worn  thin  with  the  rattle  of  its  own  machinery. 
The  industrial  world  is  restless,  over-strained 
and  quarrelsome.  It  seethes  with  furious  dis- 
content, and  looks  about  it  eagerly  for  a  fight. 
It  needs  a  rest.  It  should  be  sent,  as  nerve 
patients  are,  to  the  seaside  or  the  quiet  of  the 
hills.  Failing  this,  it  should  at  least  slacken 
the  pace  of  its  work  and  shorten  its  working 
day. 

And  for  this  the  thing  needed  is  an  altered 
public  opinion  on  the  subject  of  work  in  rela- 
tion to  human  character  and  development. 
The  nineteenth  century  glorified  work.  The 
poet,  sitting  beneath  a  shady  tree,  sang  of  its 
glories.  The  working  man  was  incited  to  con- 
template the  beauty  of  the  night's  rest  that  fol- 
lowed on  the  exhaustion  of  the  day.  It  was 
proved  to  him  that  if  his  day  was  dull  at  least 
his  sleep  was  sound.  The  ideal  of  society  was 
the  cheery  artisan  and  the  honest  blacksmith, 
awake  and  singing  with  the  lark  and  busy  all 


of  Social  Justice  147 

day  long  at  the  loom  and  the  anvil,  till  the 
grateful  night  soothed  them  into  well-earned 
slumber.  This,  they  were  told,  was  better  than 
the  distracted  sleep  of  princes. 

The  educated  world  repeated  to  itself  these 
grotesque  fallacies  till  it  lost  sight  of  plain  and 
simple  truths.  Seven  o'clock  in  the  morning 
is  too  early  for  any  rational  human  being  to 
be  herded  into  a  factory  at  the  call  of  a  steam 
whistle.  Ten  hours  a  day  of  mechanical  task 
is  too  long:  nine  hours  is  too  long:  eight  hours 
is  too  long.  I  am  not  raising  here  the  question 
as  to  how  and  to  what  extent  the  eight  hours 
can  be  shortened,  but  only  urging  the  primary 
need  of  recognizing  that  a  working  day  of 
eight  hours  is  too  long  for  the  full  and  proper 
development  of  human  capacity  and  for  the  ra- 
tional enjoyment  of  life.  There  is  no  need  to 
quote  here  to  the  contrary  the  long  and  sus- 
tained toil  of  the  pioneer,  the  eager  labor  of 
the  student,  unmindful  of  the  silent  hours,  or 
the  fierce  acquisitive  activity  of  the  money- 
maker that  knows  no  pause.  Activities  such 
as  these  differ  with  a  whole  sky  from  the  wage- 


148  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

work  of  the  modern  industrial  worker.  The 
task  in  one  case  is  done  for  its  own  sake.  It 
is  life  itself.  The  other  is  done  only  for  the 
sake  of  the  wage  it  brings.  It  is,  or  should  be, 
a  mere  preliminary  to  living. 

Let  it  be  granted,  of  course,  that  a  certain 
amount  of  work  is  an  absolute  necessity  for 
human  character.  There  is  no  more  pathetic 
spectacle  on  our  human  stage  than  the  figure 
of  poor  puppy  in  his  beach  suit  and  his  tuxedo 
jacket  seeking  in  vain  to  amuse  himself  for 
ever.  A  leisure  class  no  sooner  arises  than  the 
melancholy  monotony  of  amusement  forces  it 
into  mimic  work  and  make-believe  activities. 
It  dare  not  face  the  empty  day. 

But  when  all  is  said  about  the  horror  of  idle- 
ness the  broad  fact  remains  that  the  hours  of 
work  are  too  long.  If  we  could  in  imagina- 
tion disregard  for  a  moment  all  question  of 
how  the  hours  of  work  are  to  be  shortened  and 
how  production  is  to  be  maintained  and  ask 
only  what  would  be  the  ideal  number  of  the 
daily  hours  of  compulsory  work,  for  charac- 
ter's sake,  few  of  us  would  put  them  at  more 


of  Social  Justice  149 

than  four  or  five.  Many  of  us,  as  applied  to 
ourselves,  at  least,  would  take  a  chance  on  char- 
acter at  two. 

The  shortening  of  the  general  hours  of  work, 
then,  should  be  among  the  primary  aims  of 
social  reform.  There  need  be  no  fear  that 
with  shortened  hours  of  labor  the  sum  total  of 
production  would  fall  short  of  human  needs. 
This,  as  has  been  shown  from  beginning  to  end 
of  this  essay,  is  out  of  the  question.  Human 
desires  would  eat  up  the  result  of  ten  times  the 
work  we  now  accomplish.  Human  needs 
would  be  satisfied  with  a  fraction  of  it.  But 
the  real  difficulty  in  the  shortening  of  hours  lies 
elsewhere.  Here,  as  in  the  parallel  case  of  the 
minimum  wage,  the  danger  is  that  the  attempt 
to  alter  things  too  rapidly  may  dislocate  the  in- 
dustrial machine.  We  ought  to  attempt  such 
a  shortening  as  will  strain  the  machine  to  a 
breaking  point,  but  never  break  it.  This  can 
be  done,  as  with  the  minimum  wage,  partly  by 
positive  legislation  and  partly  collective  action. 
Not  much  can  be  done  at  once.  But  the  proc- 
ess can  be  continuous.  The  short  hours 


150  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

achieved  with  acclamation  to-day  will  later  be 
denounced  as  the  long  hours  of  to-morrow. 
The  essential  point  to  grasp,  however,  is  that 
society  at  large  has  nothing  to  lose  by  the 
process.  The  shortened  hours  become  a  part 
of  the  framework  of  production.  It  adapts  it- 
self to  it.  Hitherto  we  have  been  caught  in 
the  running  of  our  own  machine :  it  is  time  that 
we  altered  the  gearing  of  it. 

The  two  cases  selected, — the  minimum  wage 
and  the  legislative  shortening  of  hours, — have 
been  chosen  merely  as  illustrations  and  are  not 
exhaustive  of  the  things  that  can  be  done  in  the 
field  of  possible  and  practical  reform.  It  is 
plain  enough  that  in  many  other  directions  the 
same  principles  may  be  applied.  The  rectifica- 
tion of  the  ownership  of  land  so  as  to  eliminate 
the  haphazard  gains  of  the  speculator  and  the 
unearned  increment  of  wealth  created  by  the 
efforts  of  others,  is  an  obvious  case  in  point. 
The  "single  taxer"  sees  in  this  a  cure-all  for 
the  ills  of  society.  But  his  vision  is  distorted. 
The  private  ownership  of  land  is  one  of  the 
greatest  incentives  to  human  effort  that  the 


of  Social  Justice  151 

world  has  ever  known.  It  would  be  folly  to 
abolish  it,  even  if  we  could.  But  here  as  else- 
where we  can  seek  to  re-define  and  regulate  the 
conditions  of  ownership  so  as  to  bring  them 
more  into  keeping  with  a  common  sense  view 
of  social  justice. 

But  the  inordinate  and  fortuitous  gains  from 
land  are  really  only  one  example  from  a  gen- 
eral class.  The  war  discovered  the  "profi- 
teer." The  law-makers  of  the  world  are  busy 
now  with  smoking  him  out  from  his  lair.  But 
he  was  there  all  the  time.  Inordinate  and  for- 
tuitous gain,  resting  on  such  things  as  monop- 
oly, or  trickery,  or  the  mere  hazards  of  abun- 
dance and  scarcity,  complying  with  the  letter  of 
the  law  but  violating  its  spirit,  are  fit  objects 
for  appropriate  taxation.  The  ways  and 
means  are  difficult,  but  the  social  principle  in- 
volved is  clear. 

We  may  thus  form  some  sort  of  vision  of 
the  social  future  into  which  we  are  passing. 
The  details  are  indistinct.  But  the  outline  at 
least  in  which  it  is  framed  is  clear  enough.  The 
safety  of  the  future  lies  h  a  progressive  move- 


152  The  Unsolved  Riddle 

ment  of  social  control  alleviating  the  misery 
which  it  cannot  obliterate  and  based  upon  the 
broad  general  principle  of  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity. The  chief  immediate  direction  of  social 
effort  should  be  towards  the  attempt  to  give 
to  every  human  being  in  childhood  adequate 
food,  clothing,  education  and  an  opportunity  in 
life.  This  will  prove  to  be  the  beginning  of 
many  things. 


THE  END 


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